Pros and Cons of Optical vs Digital Printing

I am not an expert in this matter. Since both printing prints to RA-4 paper and uses RA-4 chemicals I feel it's OK to discuss it here in this forum. I once watched a digital printer in a Costco warehouse printing photos. It is a printer that uses laser to expose images digitally on the film to RA-4 paper and runs through a RA-4 process. I was amazed by the processing speed and by how accurate colors were printed on the paper. The operator almost spent no effort in adjusting colors at all. This made me wonder if the traditional optical printing is still superior to the digital printing other than the speed of the printing process.

Please note that I have no stand on either way. I don't do any RA-4 at all. I do like to know if I have a special image on a film that I want to print large I have good reasons to choose one way over the other. Thanks.

Digital printing uses powerful computing. The machines tolerate humans only to the point of necessity.

I worked part time as a printer at a Moto Photo, the lab started with an older analog mini lab then moved up to a Frontier. The Frontier produced balanced color and density with fewer redos, the older analog had somewhat softer color. Printing R4 in my darkroom, like the analog mini lab, softer, the filters I used had a somewhat different palet, and I could burn and dodge which I could not do with a mini lab. The negative had to scanned to be photo shopped then printed.

If you wanted the true look of the color off film, optical printing was the way to go. It produces a softer result as well. I much prefered the digital laser prints to be honest. It was easier to get better results off the digital, and part of that was because of the digital film scanner as well. Optical has its place, and doesnt mess with the look off the film as much. There are purists that insist on optical prints, just like people like film over digital, or vinyl over CDs. I will admit though I love chemical prints much better than any inkjet print though. I still think this even today.

You have far more control over the color and quality in a personal darkroom than any automated snapshot printer like Costs used (in the past tense here). But there's a learning curve to it just like anything else. Even with high-end laser printers, a lot depends on the skill of the operator and how well the equipment is maintained, and the chemistry monitored. My philosophy is, that if you want something done right, do it yourself. But as far as printing services by others goes, this subject could be stretched anywhere from fifteen cents a print to over a thousand dollars a print, all under an RA4 umbrella. It all depends.

The largest small automated printers can go is generally 12 X 18 inch print size. Bigger than that, then there are very expensive pro laser printers, along with traditional optical enlargers. Everything depends of the specific skill set of the person doing the printing, along with your ability to communicate well with that particular printer or outfit. Most commercial labs have now gone the scanning and either RA4 laser printing or the inkjet outputting mode afterwards. High end enlarging is now being done mostly by personal printmakers like me, who are more interested in optimal quality rather than rapid results.

mtjade2007 said:

I do like to know if I have a special image on a film that I want to print large I have good reasons to choose one way over the other.

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Mostly, it will be a decision informed by cost.

A digitally exposed print from a scanned file will cost you a couple of bucks up to a couple dozen depending on size. A modest enlargement made on one a rare analog minilab will be in roughly the same price range, but will be limited in paper size to usually 12".

An optically exposed enlargement made in an analog lab using an enlarger will typically cost you a couple dozen to a couple hundred dollars depending on size, or upwards of $1k if really big. This is because of the manual labor involved.

There's no clear-cut answer to which is 'best'.

In terms of what you value: If it matters to you that the print you hold in your hand is materially connected through optical and chemical processes to the original negative you shot, optical enlargement is the way to go. This has to do as much (and probably more) to do with metaphysical aspect as with actual objective characteristics of the print itself. If you seek the most accurate color reproduction from the original scene, or vast flexibility in adjusting the image to your personal needs, a digitally made print is the way to go - particularly in a color-managed workflow.

In terms of flexibility, a digital workflow is objectively superior, which I define as there being more ways to manipulate the image at a dramatically lower cost (especially in time, also materials).

Economically speaking, digital prints are best, which is evidenced by the fact that they have taken over about 99.9999998% of the photographic printing volume. Optical enlargements are rare these days, and are only found in the fine-arts domain and the amateur domain. In the fine arts realm, what artists value in optical enlargement tends to boil down to a unique look that they find they can realize easier, or exclusively, with optical methods. What this unique look constitutes tends to be difficult to impossible to formulate objectively; the metaphysical concerns alluded to earlier come into play very quickly if you discuss this in depth with dedicated analog artists. For amateurs, I think arguments revolving around full control over the printing process and the tangible aspects of printing are relevant.

Overall, in terms of objective quality criteria, a well-run digital workflow is very hard to approximate, let alone beat, with purely analog methods. The analog method, on the other hand, occupies a niche that is very hard or impossible for digital to touch due to the inherent romance of an opto-chemical process involving film that has gone through the actual hands of the photographer.

Of course, what kind of answers you get, depends largely on which audience you ask. In this particular place, there's a heavy bias towards conservatism and analog methods. This strongly skews the results. In a way, you have to figure out what you want to hear before asking the question and then deciding who you're going to ask so that you get your preferred answer...

For me, the biggest pro for traditional optical printing is that I don't have to deal with computers or look at any screens to get to the final goal. I'm staring at screens for a good chunk of my day between work computers and my phone and there's something nice to me to cut loose from that and just be in the darkroom.

Slightly more romantic, I also just like that the entire process is happening in my hands. I'm shooting, developing and printing so once I hang that final print up to dry there's a nice feeling knowing I did all that.

Optical printing can achieve higher resolution than digital. I mean resolution that is details in small area, things that you may need a loupe to see. When you print large size print 8x10 and up this advantage is no longer there.

I was already well on the road to having a nice darkroom setup before digital printing caught on. In the meantime, my day job itself transitioned over to mainly computerized paperwork flow. I had to spend many hours a week involved with a tedious business computer; and that was the last thing I wanted to do on my own private time. I had also gained a reputation as a skilled darkroom printer, and saw no reason to switch; nor do I now, even retired.

I've had a number of friends with the means to run very large commercial labs which began fully optical, then ran optical and digital in parallel for awhile. The heavy duty optical enlargers could hypothetically be kept going for another hundred years given periodic basic maintenance easy to learn. But the digital equivalents rapidly go obsolete, require expensive maintenance contracts, and are dependent upon specialized software which itself is transient. They require massive printing volume to justify their huge initial investment along with frequent upgrades. Different worlds. And when people are on the clock - a rapid-paced commercial schedule, it's difficult to do the highest quality work like one can do for themselves if appropriately experienced and equipped.

One thing I would disagree with Chan Tran about is that even in quite large prints, going optical has a distinct qualitative edge in both detail and color nuance. But that relies on optimizing your total workflow, and not garden variety "good enough" commercial standards.

I do understand why many are switching to monochrome inkjet when it comes to really big black and white prints due to the sheer logistical headaches of chemically processing especially wide papers. But with RA4 color work, big drums make it relatively easy, or it can be done with large RA4 roller transport processors still in common use in big labs.

It basically comes down to your requirements. For simply holding things together, duct tape is better than cellophane tape on all measures, but I'm not going to wrap gifts with the former, and cellophane tape exceeds requirements of gift wrapping (unless you buy the cheapest crap out there).

I think a big part of all modern technology is that it's easier to achieve decent quality faster, cheaper, and with less experience. It's not always the best, but can be very good, and for most is good enough. An experienced operator can use tech to make high quality.

For photographic prints, most people just want something that looks good. For me, when I get to making color prints, my goal is simply to hit the quality I got from minilabs at their peak - and I'll be using an enlarger. I'm not looking for the absolute best, though I can appreciate it. Admittedly, my photography is just memories, so that is a factor. Who knows, once I get rolling, I may desire higher quality and invest the time in learning to create it.

I also believe that optical prints made by a skilled operator - not necessarily the best people, just very skilled - would be better for the reasons people have mentioned in this thread. I'm not there yet, but hope to be someday - though I may never require it for my purposes.

Desktop inkjet printing is so ubiquitous and automated these days that I wonder how much feel for actual craft remains in it, if any. Even the relative ease of darkroom RA4 color printing itself is a far more tactile and flexible experience than merely punching buttons. Regardless of whether you've obtained something of professional level or not, at least you feel like the one who did it, and with your own hands, more so than any rote machine. And that might well indeed inspire one to continue making progress down the same path. The picture on the wall, or in an album, will represent your own effort; and that can be rewarding in itself.

The only people touting how rewarding a fully analog color process is, since it represents their own effort, whose opinions seem worthwhile, are those who've made their own color film, paper and chemicals. I'll cut them some slack for sourcing film and paper base materials commercially, just as I would anyone who purchases ready-to-use paper for their inkjet printer.

sillo said:

For me, the biggest pro for traditional optical printing is that I don't have to deal with computers or look at any screens to get to the final goal. I'm staring at screens for a good chunk of my day between work computers and my phone and there's something nice to me to cut loose from that and just be in the darkroom.

Slightly more romantic, I also just like that the entire process is happening in my hands. I'm shooting, developing and printing so once I hang that final print up to dry there's a nice feeling knowing I did all that.

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A digital/optical color print is usually outsourced. You need not sit in front of a computer for any part of the process.

We had two machines at the shop I worked at. One was an optical machine (I believe it was a Noritsu), it would only handle 8 inch rolls. The other was a Noritsu laser machine and would handle 12 inch rolls. Print quality to me seemed to be identical. They eventually sold the optical machine, it was older and print volumes weren't what they used to be.

The RA4 prints I did in the darkroom seem to be more crisp and the colors seemed to have more depth than what I would get from the machines at the store.

Pieter12 said:

A digital/optical color print is usually outsourced. You need not sit in front of a computer for any part of the process.

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That's a big advantage of optical printing with an enlarger - you can do it yourself instead of sending it out.

Pieter - what the heck do you mean by digital/optical? If you're referring to laser prints made using serious devices like Lambda, LIghtjet, and Chromira, it's still entirely based on a scan and digital tweaking afterwards, even though the final chemical processing after programmed laser exposure is RA4, just like with an optically enlarged print afterwards processed RA4.

And in the past, many laser printing services offered the photographer the opportunity to do their own "pre-flighting" in their own computer. The lab would do the drum scan, sent it to the photographer, who would do their own manipulations, and then the lab would do the final printing. A fussy photographer could easily sit on his butt an entirely week punching buttons to get the look he wanted, as test samples were mailed to him. The best of them would even write the own custom software. But even they did better work in a real color darkroom equipped with a good enlarger, based on what I've seen.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. But cattle will always move around trying to find out, regardless. But nothing has really changed. Exceptional prints require real work and dedication regardless of how they're done.

DREW WILEY said:

Pieter - what the heck do you mean by digital/optical? If you're referring to laser prints made using serious devices like Lambda, LIghtjet, and Chromira, it's still entirely based on a scan and digital tweaking afterwards, even though the final chemical processing after programmed laser exposure is RA4, just like with an optically enlarged print afterwards processed RA4.

And in the past, many laser printing services offered the photographer the opportunity to do their own "pre-flighting" in their own computer. The lab would do the drum scan, sent it to the photographer, who would do their own manipulations, and then the lab would do the final printing. A fussy photographer could easily sit on his butt an entirely week punching buttons to get the look he wanted, as test samples were mailed to him. The best of them would even write the own custom software. But even they did better work in a real color darkroom equipped with a good enlarger, based on what I've seen.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. But cattle will always move around trying to find out, regardless. But nothing has really changed. Exceptional prints require real work and dedication regardless of how they're done.

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I am referring to the process In the original post.

Pieter12 said:

I am referring to the process In the original post.

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...which entails a) digital rendition of an image, which then exposes photosensitive paper which is chemically created in the emulson on the paper.

...vs. b) a digital rendition of an image, which then sprays inket ink onto non-photosensitive paper

I see the advantage of A being resistance to possibility of ink running or smudging, vs. when Fuji Crystal paper is used for photochemical image.

I think he means optical as in analog, direct printing with a light shining through the neg through a lens onto the paper emulsion. Optical. Analog.

Digital- meaning scanning the neg and then using a laser to take such scan and expose the paper emulsion by that method. Digital. This is how I understand it.

wiltw said:

I see the advantage of A being resistance to possibility of ink running or smudging, vs. when Fuji Crystal paper is used for photochemical image.

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I think the OP was talking about the two ways get a print on RA4 paper, not inkjet. But I could be mistaken

L Gebhardt said:

I think the OP was talking about the two ways get a print on RA4 paper, not inkjet.

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That's certainly how I understood it, yes.

And the question interests me, because so far, my conclusion is that there is some intangible attractiveness of an optically made RA4 print, but that this attractiveness has never really been put into words in a convincing manner, let alone operationalized along objective lines. Yet, I do see some practitioners (photographers and/or printers) remaining or even becoming very dedicated to optical enlargement, which suggests that there's something there.

By extension, I'm also curious about how RA4 print (digital or analog) relates to other means of (color) printing, along similar lines. Again, I see lots of preference, and not a whole lot of convincing argumentation. I feel that such argumentation should be feasible to construct based on the collective experiences and attitudes of photographic artists. But to my surprise, very little of this knowledge is actually used in the marketplace.

To illustrate, I was at a major photo fair in my country about a week ago, and of course looked with interest at the choices for printmaking of the works on display. Concerning color prints, the number of optical enlargements or artworks that successfully exploit the 'analog' nature/pedigree of RA4 paper was extremely limited. In fact, I could just about count them on two hands. The rest was apparently digitally fashioned (sometimes visibly so, sometimes it was possible to infer this from contextual information), and within that realm, there was surprisingly little effort being done to distinguish RA4 prints from inkjet prints. The marketplace as it functioned on that particular fair also did not seem to favor either option in terms of price point or prominence in presentation, nor was any particular emphasis put on material choices. To illustrate the latter, of the RA4 prints I saw, there was precisely *one* gallery that took the effort of actually mentioning which paper they used (and they were unsure about how exactly it was finished). The rest kept it at a brief 'C-print' on the tag, leaving us to guess at the rest.

And of course, the vast majority of prints were inkjets, mostly on Hahnemühle paper. Whatever objective and/or intangible motivations there are to play into, Hahnemühle is doing it far better than any other manufacturer. The paper was mentioned, but nobody bothered mentioning which inks (apart from vacuous statements like 'archival pigment' etc.) were used - which to my mind would be at least as relevant as knowing which brand marketed the paper.

So it's a very relevant question that @mtjade2007 asks here, with significant economic and artistic impact. But also a question that seems very difficult to move past the level of poorly substantiated personal preferences, human-nature related dichotomies such as progressivism vs. conservatism and sensitivity to endless repetition of superficial claims put forth by 'authorities' in the field.

Sorry to sound somewhat cynical in the above, but when it comes to the future of analog photography, the future of RA4 paper, and perhaps even the printed photograph to begin with, it seems that the vital questions as of yet remain without a satisfactory answer. And that's a very risky proposition.

Pieter12 said:

A digital/optical color print is usually outsourced. You need not sit in front of a computer for any part of the process.

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How do you end up with the final edit to send out?

Yes this is how I understood the OP conversation as well, as per my previous comments. Inkjet prints are nice and can look good, but there is something about a chemical print (RA4) that I like more. It doesnt look quite as fake looking to me, regardless of whether it was optically printed, or if it was scanned and laser'd out to a RA4 print. Again I find optical prints softer in tone and color, and sharpness isn't quite as high, but reveals a smoother more even image. Digital prints have a harder edge.

sillo said:

How do you end up with the final edit to send out?

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Drop off your film to have a lab either optically print like an analog minilab or scan and print like in a Frontier.

L Gebhardt said:

Drop off your film to have a lab either optically print like an analog minilab or scan and print like in a Frontier.

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I realize that's an option for some people, but at that point I personally don't see the point in bothering with film in 2023 if that's what I'm going to be doing. I also don't think you're going to get the best out of a digital ra4 process if you just leave it up to the lab tech/auto settings of the scanner.

So I'd be developing and scanning myself, having to edit and then send out the file to a lab, which brings me back to a computer screen.