Digital Prints

element, the basic unit of image information) in terms of certain attributes such as
color and intensity. This data can be stored, manipulated, and ultimately transformed
with digital printing technologies back into a normally viewed image (see Chapter 2
for an in-depth look at this).
Printing
Traditional (analog) printing is a mechanical process that uses a physical master or “matrix”
for making repeatable prints. Commercial and even traditional fine-art printing presses
use pressure or impact to transfer the image from a carrier, plate, or blanket—the matrix—
to the receiving paper. Similarly, with old-style photography, the negative or a transparency
is the matrix through which light travels to expose the print.
Digital printing is different, however. There is no pressure or impact, and there is no
physical matrix. The matrix now sits in the computer in the form of digital data that
can be converted repeatedly, with or without any variation, into a print by any photographer-artist
who either does his own printing (“self-printing”) or who uses an outside
printing service. (I’m intentionally avoiding all the permutations and variations of
computer-to-plate and other forms of commercial digital printing, although there’s no
reason they can’t be used.)
Chapter 1 ■ Navigating the Digital Landscape 13
One of two large murals (and five other
pieces) that were commissioned by the
Boston Federal Reserve Bank from
digital artist Dorothy Simpson Krause
in 2000 (and completed in the fall of
2003). Krause used historical
documents and photographs from the
bank’s archives to create the 60 x 151inch
mural, which is composed of five
panels printed on a Mutoh Falcon II
inkjet printer.
Courtesy of Dorothy Simpson Krause
www.dotkrause.com