Digital Prints

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Mastering Digital Printing
Looking at quality first, Florida pro photographer and master printer Steven Katzman
describes his own recent conversion experience: “After spending 30 years in the darkroom,”
he explains, “I was reluctant to try something new. Early on, I had seen some digital blackand-white
prints, but was not impressed. Then, I attended a scanner seminar and brought
along one of my black-and-white negatives with a selenium-toned darkroom print. They
scanned in and inkjet-printed the image for me on the spot, and I realized in that moment
that the digital age had caught up with traditional black-and-white printing. The comparison
of the digital print with my silver print that had taken hours to pull can only be
described as profound, the quality was that good.”
Regarding permanence or longevity, photographer and digital black-and-white printing
expert Paul Roark admits that “until recently, digital black-and-white prints have not been
as durable as silver prints,” and fiber-based silver or platinum prints are the standard for
longevity against which all else is compared. “Unfortunately,” he continues, “the older
black-and-white inksets were not as good as originally represented because they contained
dyes and were not pure pigments, and as such, some people saw their allegedly ‘archival’
materials turn brown or fade.”
However, things are definitely improving. “My tests indicate that the best modern, carbon-based
monochrome inksets (MIS UltraTone, Cone PiezoTone) do not warm up like
the old inks and are extremely stable; more stable in fact than color pigments,” says Roark.
“So, in my view, digital black-and-white printing has come of age.”
Steven Katzman turned heads at a trade
show in New York City when he
exhibited his large-format digital blackand-white
prints including Young Joe
Louis (shown), which is in the Eastman
Kodak corporate collection. “People
said that they had never seen digital
prints with such a neutral color and
smooth transition of tonal values,” says
Katzman, who uses the ImagePrint RIP
from ColorByte with Epson wideformat
printers.
Courtesy of Steven Katzman Photography
www.stevenkatzmanphotography.com.