Printing from digital files.

Ok, apparently I've been living under a rock. Can you take a digital file, print it, and then use it to make an analog print using chemistry?

I promise this is not a trolling post. I honestly had no idea and only learned about it because I was watching a B&H Event Space lecture.

If this is in fact the case, I may have just found the salvation to my creativity.

You can have a LVT negative made from a digital file...

This is what most of the people are doing who are making contact prints with most of the Alternative and Traditional print processes - cyanotypes, Carbon Transfer prints, Van Dyke brown, Platinum Palladium, etc., etc.
Many are using their own inkjet printers to make their digital negatives. Their challenges and frustrations and expenditures range from the trivial to the profound - just like with many things photographic.
Some are starting from film originals and then digitizing them. Others are using digital capture.

MattKing said:

This is what most of the people are doing who are making contact prints with most of the Alternative and Traditional print processes - cyanotypes, Carbon Transfer prints, Van Dyke brown, Platinum Palladium, etc., etc.
Many are using their own inkjet printers to make their digital negatives. Their challenges and frustrations and expenditures range from the trivial to the profound - just like with many things photographic.
Some are starting from film originals and then digitizing them. Others are using digital capture.

Click to expand...

I had no idea that this was a possibility. No idea at all.

Ditto of what Matt said. I have made pt/pd prints from film negatives, enlarged film negatives and digital negatives from both scanned film and digital capture for some time. Each has pluses and minuses but are capable of producing beautiful results. Lately I have been using mainly digital negatives ( Pictorico Premium OHP Transparency Film). Advantages of digital negatives are ease of expanded editing to make the negative and after seeing a test print and wanting to make some changes, you can go to your computer and print a new negative and then back to the darkroom to make the contact print.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

http://www.sculptureandphotography.com/

Since I now make prints using only the 'archaic print processes' (being now 'retired' and can't affford 'commercial ' B&W paper, I now print onto Pictorico OH 'film (on the 'frosted' side) the results of the scan. I can achieve the 'best' size and tonal 'range for the 'process. It IS a bit more 'work' but somehow more 'satisfying.

Ken

Hi Christopher
You can also take your inverted your file and print it on inexpensive copy machine / printer paper, you will have a paper negative, and if you rub it with melted paraffin ( easier cheaper and less messy than bees wax ) you can make yourself a semi translucent waxed paper negative, and make prints from them. Much less expensive than Pictorico, imagesetter, and "fancy" enlarged digital negatives.

The leaf pictures, and others on page 2 of my media page while in color ( some were gum over cyanotype, others were color added by me with a computer or by hand /crayon, paints &c ) were made with waxed paper negatives printed onto traditional photo paper. If you can fine old boxes of "AZO" paper, it will be good still ( even in from the 1940s ), and you might be able to make contact prints in the sun, instead of long enlarger light times, or trying to find a 300watt bulb ( they are like salt paper but suspended in gelatin so relative asa compared to film is like asa .25 or maybe less ) because the paper is so slow. You develop it in regular Dektol.

Have fun !
John

Hi! I don't want to hijack this thread but I was about to start a new one and taught my question could fit in here. I have found some bits of answers in other threads, other forums but not quite definitive and quite old. Is it possible to print a 4x5" digital negative on pictorico (let's say using an Epson P800), place it in a 4x5 enlarger, and make a excellent quality 30x40" print?
The aim: making a print larger than the maximum printing size of the printer (17X23 in this case).
Thanks!

Photopathe said:

Hi! I don't want to hijack this thread but I was about to start a new one and taught my question could fit in here. I have found some bits of answers in other threads, other forums but not quite definitive and quite old. Is it possible to print a 4x5" digital negative on pictorico (let's say using an Epson P800), place it in a 4x5 enlarger, and make a excellent quality 30x40" print?
The aim: making a print larger than the maximum printing size of the printer (17X23 in this case).
Thanks!

Click to expand...

It won't work. In simple terms, you are downgrading your image to print the 4x5 (given that the printer has limitation on how many lines it can resolve per inch) resulting in a loss of information that can't be retrieved if you blow it up again in the darkroom.

Photopathe said:

Hi! I don't want to hijack this thread but I was about to start a new one and taught my question could fit in here. I have found some bits of answers in other threads, other forums but not quite definitive and quite old. Is it possible to print a 4x5" digital negative on pictorico (let's say using an Epson P800), place it in a 4x5 enlarger, and make a excellent quality 30x40" print?
The aim: making a print larger than the maximum printing size of the printer (17X23 in this case).
Thanks!

Click to expand...

Yes, but not really. Here's what I mean:

You can do what you're asking. It will technically work. The problem is, most printers max out at around 300dpi. That's a great resolution for a final print. But, if you then optically enlarged your digitally printed 4x5 negative on an optical 4x5 enlarger, you're going to have your 30x40" print show a final resolution of about 40dpi. That means you're going to see lots of finely rendered inkjet printed dots, and your 30x40" print is going to look pretty bad.

Reviving this oldish thread with a different but related question. I read that printing from an inkjet digital negative is excellent for alternative processes (undistinguishable from a film negative) but not as good for a silver print. The fact that the inkjet digital negative doesn't have continuous tone is supposed to be more obvious in the case of (contact) silver prints. What is the opinion and experience of people here? How true is this when using Epson's original inks for example (with QTR or else)? And does the use of piezo DN completely solves this issue?
Thanks!

Images exposed by a camera directly onto a piece of film, as in analogue photography, do not have continuous tones. The image they record is made up of the presence or absence of tiny random dots of what many people call "grain". Each type of film has a maximum possible resolution, and each frame has an actual resolution which is determined by the quality of the light of the scene, the exposure settings of the camera, and the way the film is processed.

The difference in results you will see between printing from a piece of film and a similarly sized inkjet print, is that the resolution of a piece of film can be as high as ~5,000 dpi whereas the highest end professional photo inkjet printers are nominally capable of ~1,400 dpi at max (meaning less in practice), and a normal printer like the ones that most people have is only capable of a maximum of ~600 dpi.

To get a similar result to a print made from a piece of 35mm film you would need a 600 dpi inkjet print that is ~ 8 x 12", and if your inkjet printer is only capable of 300dpi, as many are, you would need to make your inkjet print ~ 16 x 24" to match the quality of a 35mm frame. If you have a professional high resolution photo inkjet printer you could maybe get away with making your inkjet negative ~ 4 x 5" if you printed at the maximum resolution of 1,440 dpi

Of course the bigger you want to enlarge, the larger the inkjet negative you will need to make.

This is assuming you use sheets of clear plastic that are compatible with your inkjet printer, something that is not terribly difficult to obtain.

An interesting post from the past. I have spent some time digitizing 4x5 negs on a home scanner but never really obtained the consistency I wanted.

To do digital to film, I was going to covert the digital photo to a negative in post processing, then scan it onto a transparency.
Or I may just set up my old 4x5 camera and take a photo of the digital image on the monitor.

Of course we are not taking fine art or Ansel Adams here but we are talking some interesting experiments to past the time this winter.

Photopathe said:

Reviving this oldish thread with a different but related question. I read that printing from an inkjet digital negative is excellent for alternative processes (undistinguishable from a film negative) but not as good for a silver print. The fact that the inkjet digital negative doesn't have continuous tone is supposed to be more obvious in the case of (contact) silver prints. What is the opinion and experience of people here? How true is this when using Epson's original inks for example (with QTR or else)? And does the use of piezo DN completely solves this issue?
Thanks!

Click to expand...

Honestly, even for alternative processes the quality just isn't there. The density is almost impossible to get correctly and ends up looking like a half-tone. I'm sure that it is do-able, but might take more time to figure out than it's worth.