Pros and Cons of Optical vs Digital Printing

Sal Santamaura · Oct 1, 2023

braxus said:
...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.

How long before this leads to another analog/digital audio "discussion?" The observations in those seem very much like yours here.

DREW WILEY · Oct 1, 2023

A high-end laser printing lab can customize the settings to better meet your own expectations. It's not like quickie automated snapshot printing on small rolls of paper. Of course, you will pay more, perhaps a lot more. They can also offer a greater choice of papers, and often up to quite large sizes. In the hands of a highly skilled operator, the the end result can look much like a directly optically enlarged print.

You have to decide just what level of service you need and can afford. It is much more cost effective to do you own enlarging in your own darkroom, and then RA4 process it yourself. But unless you already have the right equipment and experience, there is a distinct cost to the learning curve. RA4 printing and processing per se is relatively easy and affordable; but just like pickup up a violin, making real music with it doesn't come instantly.

And as far as this or that process in risk of being doomed, that's always been the case in photography. One would have to do a lot of research just to find out how many variations have come and gone. And no doubt all the standard options people use today will go extinct sooner or later, and something else will take their place. Why should that fact cause you to put your life on hold? When photography was first invented nearly 200 years ago, people were saying that it lacked only one thing, and once it was possible to make actual color photographs, painting was doomed. But now we're past the hundred year mark in color photography itself, and art and craft stores all over the place are thriving selling brushes, pigments, and painting substrates. People find a way.

MattKing · Oct 1, 2023

Sal Santamaura said:
How long before this leads to another analog/digital audio "discussion?" The observations in those seem very much like yours here.

The observation may reflect technological differences, but it also may reflect differences in trends and perceptions and industry norms.
Papers and inks have changed, but so have user expectations.
My sense - even with black and white darkroom prints - is that I now see overall more high contrast prints, and prints with more emphasis and weight in the shadows than I used to. The technological changes (if any) tend to reflect and support those sorts of changes.
That is a different question then one involving technological potentials.

DREW WILEY · Oct 1, 2023

Has little to do with technological changes, but more just esthetic trends. In terms of black and white printing, I can make a very high key print during the same session as a very bold chiaroscuro one, sometimes with even the same paper and developer. It's easier than ever with today's high quality VC papers. And I think both are easier to achieve optically than by digital printing means.

But because even monochrome inkjet is tricky to subtly texture or tone, many of its practitioners necessarily default to basic neutral black, or some slightly sepia equivalent. Then there is the factor of so many beginners just aiming for an AA wannabee look, with a lot of analogous drama (yet little of the same poetry). Earlier Iris printing started out the other direction, often trying to mimic subtle Pt/Pd prints (but with none of the same fade-resistance).

Pieter12 · Oct 1, 2023

MattKing said:
The observation may reflect technological differences, but it also may reflect differences in trends and perceptions and industry norms.
Papers and inks have changed, but so have user expectations.
My sense - even with black and white darkroom prints - is that I now see overall more high contrast prints, and prints with more emphasis and weight in the shadows than I used to. The technological changes (if any) tend to reflect and support those sorts of changes.
That is a different question then one involving technological potentials.

Could also be a matter of trends, taste and style.

Sal Santamaura · Oct 1, 2023

DREW WILEY said:
...even monochrome inkjet is tricky to subtly texture or tone, many of its practitioners necessarily default to basic neutral black...

I used quite a bit of paper and ink finding correct settings so images on Hahnemuhle FineArt Baryta Satin would be chromatically compatible with the paper. That was after evaluating a wide variety of papers for appropriate, i.e. not garishly shiny, surface reflectivity, as well as for chromatic compatibility with white Rising board. My first attempt with neutral black settings was most disquieting.

wiltw · Oct 2, 2023

The OP author needs to RESTATE the question that is really being posed!...(which is why first defined my own interpretation of the question he/she had raised)...is it...

A) lens projection of film onto photosensitive paper vs. digital file driven laser-based exposure of photosensitive paper

or

B) exposure of photosensitive paper vs. non-optical digital file driven image formation on non-photosensitive paper

A entails a totally analog process (film) vs. initial digital image capture (convert film image to digital image) -- yet both resulting in optical exposure of paper to form image,

whereas B involves digital formation with optical paper vs. digital image formation onto non-optical paper

Fujicolor Crystal Archive Professional Paper Super Type CN produces bright, crisp, commercial prints from laser printer and other digital exposure systems.

DREW WILEY · Oct 2, 2023

The question is, at least for me, how does CN specifically compare to previous Super C in direct optical enlargement? I don't know of anyone who has belled that cat yet. I don't mind figuring it out myself, but just don't have the budget or opportunity yet. My color printing season for this year is over, and next Spring I'll go back to my remaining big roll of Fujiflex, and use that up before trying anything else. Super C was an excellent product available in a wide range of sizes clear up to 50 inch roll width, and in different sheens. CN is purportedly too. But I'd probably test it out in more convenient and affordable 20 inch width before scaling up, if I ever get around to that at all. Have an awful lot of b&w drymounting to get caught up with first.

Pieter12 · Oct 2, 2023

wiltw said:
The OP author needs to RESTATE the question that is really being posed!...(which is why first defined my own interpretation of the question he/she had raised)...is it...

A) lens projection of film onto photosensitive paper vs. digital file driven laser-based exposure of photosensitive paper
or
B) exposure of photosensitive paper vs. non-optical digital file driven image formation on non-photosensitive paper

A entails a totally analog process (film) vs. initial digital image capture (convert film image to digital image) -- yet both resulting in optical exposure of paper to form image,

whereas B involves digital formation with optical paper vs. digital image formation onto non-optical paper

Fujicolor Crystal Archive Professional Paper Super Type CN produces bright, crisp, commercial prints from laser printer and other digital exposure systems.

The OP was quite clear: this is about different methods printing to RA-4 paper using RA-4 chemicals. Nothing needs to be restated.

koraks · Oct 2, 2023

Pieter12 said:
The OP was quite clear: this is about different methods printing to RA-4 paper using RA-4 chemicals. Nothing needs to be restated.

Yes, I agree. OP was really crystal clear. Re-reading that post, I really see no way how it might be misunderstood. It's about digitally exposed RA4 paper vs. RA4 paper optically exposed through a negative. Comparisons with inkjet etc. IMO should go somewhere else; they're beyond scope.

Chan Tran · Oct 2, 2023

What is the resolving power of RA-4 paper? Digitally prints on RA-4 paper is limited to about 400ppi but I believe the RA-4 paper can resolve more than that. So with small prints the optically printing can result in higher resolution images.

koraks · Oct 2, 2023

Chan Tran said:
What is the resolving power of RA-4 paper?

Probably up to the size of dye clouds - although even that statement will likely result in discussion...dye clouds are somewhere in the 1 ~ 10 um range, which would translate into a resolving power between 2,500dpi and 25,000dpi...if you consider dye clouds as binary elements. I don't know how valid that assumption is, but I'm inclined to stick with it.

Chan Tran said:
Digitally prints on RA-4 paper is limited to about 400ppi

Most are 300dpi. There are some 600dpi printers, but those are rare. There's arguably very little benefit to going higher than 300dpi unless you take a magnifier to a print, which is what most people don't do, so I guess that's why the industry is mostly perfectly happy with the 300dpi limit. With a good loupe, the individual pixels on a print from, say, a Frontier LP9700 are easily visible. With the naked eye, I can't see them and everything looks perfectly smooth.

YMMV...

DREW WILEY · Oct 2, 2023

Again, RA4 output exists not just on RC paper, but on polyester base which is capable of holding more detail than any paper substrate. But even in the latter case, an optimized direct optical system can convey more detail than even a high end laser printer can deliver. But in the right hands, laser results can come pretty darn close as far as normal unmagnified vision goes. It also depends on the sampling size and original film format itself.

There don't seem to be many Frontier printers around here; but there have been LIghtjets, Lambdas, and Chromiras. The risk with the former two is annoying banding when not properly calibrated. But with Chroimira, you get a tiny dot effect (distinct from pixelation) evident even with close visual inspection. So, yeah, that wouldn't mean much for someone backing off to take in an overall large print, but might be an annoyance to someone expecting results comparable to a contact print being closely viewed.

The big domestic providers of Lambda, Lightjet, and Chromira services can output onto a variety of Fuji Crystal Archive media, including the Fujiflex Supergloss polyester medium. Doing it on Fujitrans backlit medium is more of a specialty by just certain labs, the leading one using the Chromira system instead. The main point is to establish a good working relationship with one of these labs, explaining your own needs well, and then finding your own realistic cost basis. Some of them also provide less expensive "machine prints" up to 12X18 inches on basic Noritsu or analogous printers (in this area, on Fuji Supreme paper).

Sal Santamaura · Oct 2, 2023

Chan Tran said:
What is the resolving power of RA-4 paper?...

Last time I read about that, it was around two decades ago, and Ctein reported 60 lp/mm, if I remember correctly. I've no idea whether today's RA-4 paper is the same, better or worse.

DREW WILEY · Oct 2, 2023

It's far higher than that, depending. Obviously a matte RC paper surface can't hold the same detail as a flatter gloss surface, much less a polyester substrate with nearly the detail capacity as sheet film itself. One also has to factor what high end apo or graphics quality enlarging lenses can do, especially given large format originals to work with, compared to garden variety optics.

Ctein always coveted an actual Apo El Nikkor 210/5.6 lens, but it wouldn't have made a bit of sense in his case to spend all that money. His conventional Beseler enlarger wouldn't hold that kind of extra lens weight well, and his choice of dye transfer printing is a medium which inherently bleeds dyes a little, so is incapable of extreme detail resolution. He now does entirely digital workflow, since all the necessary DT materials he relied on dried up. He was probably the last person to use Pan Matrix film - going directly from color negs to triple printing matrices, rather than making intervening color separations on black and white film.

Sal Santamaura · Oct 2, 2023

Sal Santamaura said:
Last time I read about that, it was around two decades ago, and Ctein reported 60 lp/mm, if I remember correctly. I've no idea whether today's RA-4 paper is the same, better or worse.

DREW WILEY said:
It's far higher than that, depending. Obviously a matte RC paper surface can't hold the same detail as a flatter gloss surface, much less a polyester substrate with nearly the detail capacity as sheet film itself...

Not much higher than that for RA-4 papers which aren't obnoxiously shiny. Ctein wrote about it in his book, on page 3:

https://ctein.com/PostExposure2ndIllustrated.pdf

"A typical RA-4 color-negative paper can reproduce around 65 lp/mm." It's reasonable to assume that by "typical" he was referring to "pearl" or whatever Fuji/Kodak called that surface in their RA-4 products. Again, I've no idea whether today's RA-4 paper is capable of the same, less or more resolution.

braxus · Oct 3, 2023

The Noritsu QSS 3011 I used in my day was about 330 Dpi, or 300 to be basic. I dont think you can really go much about 300 and still see a difference. Optical prints didnt look as sharp to my eye, but that could all be with how the digital printer was calibrated.

wiltw · Oct 3, 2023

koraks said:
Most are 300dpi. There are some 600dpi printers, but those are rare. There's arguably very little benefit to going higher than 300dpi unless you take a magnifier to a print, which is what most people don't do, so I guess that's why the industry is mostly perfectly happy with the 300dpi limit. With a good loupe, the individual pixels on a print from, say, a Frontier LP9700 are easily visible. With the naked eye, I can't see them and everything looks perfectly smooth.

So we are discussing a 'how many angels on pin head' that, to the naked eye at the 12" viewing distance, the human eye lacks the visual aculty to discern much difference more than 300dpi?! finer resolution within the print is never appreciated unless one is magnifying the detail to be able to discern any difference. One needed only 5 line pairs per millimeter of detail on the classical optical print to fool the eye into perceiving a print as 'sharp'.

and in the comparison of a lens projected RA4 vs. the digital file RA4, there is the big variable of the lens performance...its preservation of contrast while presenting detail resolution, and its ability to focus all colors of light nearly identically (or not). and do so without introducing any distortion while doing so, and while using an aperture which does not impose aperture-dependent diffraction.

DREW WILEY · Oct 3, 2023

Actually seeing the results in person is a different thing than simply making hypothetical web arguments. There's more to it than DPI. In the optical enlargement case, DPI is a nonexistent factor for one thing. And what exactly do you mean by DPI ? What kinds of dots? Even different kinds of lens apertures were available in high-end process lenses related to the specific shape of apochromatic dots, along with different lens formulations. People making their living in that kind of thing made distinctions in such things. Nor is it all about LPMM.

There are cumulative nuances involved which do add up visually. For example, I might choose between a very high resolution graphics-quality enlarging lens and a more garden variety one not because one is technically better than the other, but simply due to whatever specific "look" I'm after at the moment. You simply can't quantify everything related to esthetics.

But I realize that this thread is basically a pro or con conversation in relation to common snapshot printing devices, and not high end optimization at all. So it all depends.

koraks · Oct 3, 2023

DREW WILEY said:
There are cumulative nuances involved which do add up visually.

And maybe not only visually. Perhaps there's more the value of a print than just the visual aspect. Note I'm not talking about financial value here.

DREW WILEY said:
You simply can't quantify everything related to esthetics.

No, but could we attempt to put it into words? There's some room between "it just is" and "x dpi". I think it's exactly that space this thread should explore.

DREW WILEY said:
But I realize that this thread is basically a pro or con conversation in relation to common snapshot printing devices

It only is if we steer it that way. And I don't think we're unequivocally doing that. So feel free to comment on the more artistic side of the spectrum.

Sirius Glass · Oct 3, 2023

If one has a darkroom, then great print optically. Many do not have the space for a darkroom or the money for the equipment and therefore digital printing is the only option.

DREW WILEY · Oct 3, 2023

That's hard to do koraks. I actually have a friend, a successful painter now in terrible health, who briefly diverted into photography and published an interesting book, who actually wanted relatively poor amateur level cheap prints of his color shots for a relatively off effect, much like people today might choose a cheap plastic Diana camera or something. But his big oil paintings were rather highly detailed. Guess he needed a break from time to time, just like I sometimes resort to a 35mm camera and making grainy little prints as a break from my large format work.

But back to enlarging lenses. I have a set of Apo Nikkors all with multi-bladed apertures for sake of round apo dots in the printing industry. But they also offered a 360mm version with both round and square aperture options in the same lens, plus waterhouse stops if needed. In Asia, print shops preferred the way Japanese and Chinese characters were rendered by square apertures, versus how color pictures would be rendered in a more normal manner using apochromatic round dots. It's kinda like Bokeh - what exactly does that mean? - yet people will spend huge sums of lens money if needs be over subtle nuances of it. Hard to quantify, but visually there.

Back when Agfachrome 2000 was still available, it was capable of very lovely but almost Pointillist-blatant dye clouds, which I rendered using high quality enlarging lenses; but I don't think I'd want their look from any kind of digital dot printer - it might cause an over-the-top interference pattern. There are many such cases where one just has to experiment to see what they like, or which lab might do it best if they don't print it themselves.

Nikon 2 · Mar 28, 2024

Sal Santamaura said:
How long before this leads to another analog/digital audio "discussion?" The observations in those seem very much like yours here.

Times up!
Optical printing is vinyl and digital scanning is CD…

wiltw · Mar 28, 2024

mtjade2007 said:
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.

This is very specific wording that describes a LASER to optically expose onto photosensitive paper, which is then chemically processed...e.g. Fuji Crystal paper. While hs states 'on the film', implying a machine scans film to create a digital file, this equally can be a digital camera file sent to the same lab for printing. Before Costco got out of the photoprocessing business, this is exactly the process which was used.

So permanence of [optically exposed photosensitive paper[]vs. [digital printed with inket image on inkjet print] is indeed a question posed by OP.
And the benefit is exactly why I would have prints made at Costco, rather than inket print them at home. Permanance of image.

koraks · Mar 28, 2024

wiltw said:
And the benefit is exactly why I would have prints made at Costco, rather than inket print them at home. Permanance of image.

It's very debatable if the Costco prints will have better permanence than a modern inkjet. In fact, they likely won't. Firstly, minilab as you'd find (*I imagine) in a Costco store has no wash bath to speak of, which means the prints are quite prone to yellowing with age as a result of incomplete removal of blix. Moreover, since they're rapid access machines, the blix process may not be complete to begin with and residual silver levels can be quite high, resulting in darkening of the whites over time.

And then we're not even starting on the question whether modern inkjet pigments (lakes) in a modern inkjet application (i.e. microporous RC paper) are more or less prone to fading and/or shifting than the dyes in RA4. This is virtually uncharted terrain and there's really no way of telling, other than that we know that chromogenic prints do fade, especially when subjected to UV light and free radicals (ozone). We can expect pigment inkjet will do the same thing, but we don't know at what rate.

Then there's the business of unused dye couplers remaining present in an RA4 print and over time they will turn to a colored state, resulting in further toning and shifting of the whites. Inkjet of course does not have an equivalent to this, but may or may not have other issues, for instance due to aging of the microporous RC coating (although I'd expect this to be fairly inert) or yellowing of a topcoat layer in case this is applied.

All considered it's an insanely complex issue and I wouldn't even think of making a statement along the lines of RA4 prints being of better permanence than modern inkjets. We just don't know.
One thing we do know is that dye-based inkjets are iffy business in terms of permanence, but nobody in their right mind who is concerned with image permanence would opt for dye-based inkjets.

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