Whitewall Ilford Baryta prints from digital files?

I was intrigued by this company offering prints on Ilford B&W baryta paper from digital files (e.g. negative scans).


From the blurb:

The special developing process at the WhiteWall photo lab turns your artistic black-and-white photographs into high-end baryta prints. First, the cutting-edge laser exposes your image onto the photo paper. This is followed by traditional silver halide developing, fixing, and washing.

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So a traditional paper exposed via a 'laser'. I wonder if anyone has more info about this process? Is this a routine procedure commercially, or is it relatively rare?

Also - has anyone tried this company? How are the prints? I'm particularly interested in the opinion of 'traditional' darkroom printers who have also experimented with the separate avenue of 1) digitising their negatives and 2) sending them out for prints as above.

I have tried it. The prints are very good but you have to understand their "improvements" and select/deselect what is relevant to you.

To make a perfect print with whitewall you may have to make a couple of test prints first. (They offer watermarked prints at a discount.)

According to my computer screen, they print a little bit darker than what I see on screen, and I need to adjust for that.
(I use a macbook pro 2024 screen for example, other hardware setups will be different)

I have the print mentioned in this thread hanging next to a print of a photo by Watabe Yukichi printed by a Japanese master printer (in 2013) using conventional darkroom methods - and tonality and texture is very similar.

albireo said:

I wonder if anyone has more info about this process? Is this a routine procedure commercially, or is it relatively rare?

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It's often associated with the term 'LightJet', although that was specifically a Canadian (later taken over by a Dutch company) product intended to expose silver halide papers (color or B&W) with lasers. So yes, it's a common procedure commercially and it's essentially the same way virtually all color chromogenic prints are made today.

For history sakes I was the first Lab world wide to do a silver gelatin fiber base mural via Lambda exposing unit , ( others were doing this on RC Paper in the late 90's) Wiki says it was Ilford and Metro Imaging collaboration but this is a falsehood that one day I should change, There was a lab in mid west doing silver enlarged prints using a Devere digital enlarging system before me but I forget their name. I purchased the Lambda for this very reason.

Thank you all - @Carnie Bob - what is a Lambda exposing unit and where can I read more about those?

@Nitroplait that thread is really helpful. I am preparing an order for a few baryta prints. I am uploading 4000dpi scans from a few 35mm and 120 black and white negatives in .tiff format processed & exported in Gray Gamma 2.2 and will order a few 20x30cm test prints. I have deactivated their post-processing as you suggested in your post. I will report back. This might be what I've been looking for.

albireo said:

Thank you all - @Carnie Bob - what is a Lambda exposing unit and where can I read more about those?

@Nitroplait that thread is really helpful. I am preparing an order for a few baryta prints. I am uploading 4000dpi scans from a few 35mm and 120 black and white negatives in .tiff format processed & exported in Gray Gamma 2.2 and will order a few 20x30cm test prints. I have deactivated their post-processing as you suggested in your post. I will report back. This might be what I've been looking for.

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Get in fast as most labs with lambda are replacing with high end large format inkjet.
(which in my opinion are indistinguishable from each other anyway)

gbroadbridge said:

Get in fast as most labs with lambda are replacing with high end large format inkjet.
(which in my opinion are indistinguishable from each other anyway)

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Thanks

Would they be distinguishable from a wet print of the same negative? Or do, for the three methods, (lambda, inkjet, wet print) operator's skills play a similarly strong role?

Also - durability - would there be significant differences in durability across the three provided they're printed on the same baryta paper?

albireo said:

Would they be distinguishable from a wet print of the same negative? Or do, for the three methods, (lambda,inkjet,wet print) operator's skills play a strong role, too?

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Media choice in particular plays a major role for inkjet, so does to an extent ink setting. And then of course calibration/linearization, toning etc. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking B&W inkjet printing is necessarily easier than wet printing if you want to produce an excellent print. Inkjet is a whole lot easier if you want to produce a decent print that will be satisfactory for the great majority of people. If you aim for the top segment, both inkjet and silver halide are on the interface of science, magic and craft.

albireo said:

Also - durability - would there be significant differences in durability across the three provided they're printed on the same baryta paper?

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It will not be the same paper, let's get that out of the way. There are inkjet baryta papers and silver halide baryta papers. They're different. Longevity of the inkjet prints will depend on esp. the specific paper used, the ink set, any finishing layers applied and storage conditions. For silver halide baryta prints it's an equivalent series of factors. The long & short of it is you can't say that either inkjet or silver halide will last longer as long as you're comparing high-end prints. In the lower segment, silver halide baryta basically doesn't exist to begin with and inkjet can be hit & miss, depending.

Sorry, there are no easy answers to this one.

Thanks @koraks - a follow up question - which type of baryta paper would be used for the 'laser' process advertised by the company I linked to? It seems they develop it, fix it and wash it as normal so I'm assuming it's silver halide baryta paper?

Ilfords digital fibre paper is actually Galerie G 4 with an extended red sensitivity, the paper I first worked on a Lambda with was Agfa Multigrade warmtone 2002 era.

albireo said:

which type of baryta paper would be used for the 'laser' process advertised by the company I linked to?

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A similar kind of paper that you'd use in the darkroom, just a fixed grade fairly high contrast; see @Carnie Bob's response above. After processing I don't think you'll be able to tell the difference with a regular Ilford darkroom paper.

albireo said:

Thanks

Would they be distinguishable from a wet print of the same negative? Or do, for the three methods, (lambda, inkjet, wet print) operator's skills play a similarly strong role?

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Well, a custom made wet darkroom print has many variables: exposure, chemical variations, temperature variations, operator skill, etc.

Lambda and Ink jet are quite consistent based on the digital file. Minor variations are possible but less likely.

I would consider a hand made darkroom print to be 'one off', less so for any digital print.

albireo said:

Also - durability - would there be significant differences in durability across the three provided they're printed on the same baryta paper?

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I think longevity will be answered in 50-100 years time
There are all sorts of claims floating around on both sides.

At the end of the day a poorly made darkroom print can deteriorate quite rapidly as can a cheap inkjet print.