Hybrid wet-printing and scanning...opinions?

[David_Manning]

I've been thinking about this for a little while now. I'd like to know if anyone has any experience trying this, and whether they were happy with their results...

Specifically, wet printing a 35mm b&w film image to about 4x6 size, then scanning the super-sharp print on a flatbed at a dpi setting reserved for negative scanning.

So, say I wet-print an image at 4x6, just the way I want it. At that magnification, should look VERY sharp. Now, take that 4x6 print, and scan it on an Epson at, say, 2400dpi (effectively treating it like a 4x5 negative). After a simple levels cleanup, enlarging to about a 20"x30" digital image at 300dpi, and then sending out to get printed digitally on a lightjet w/silver-halide paper.

Might this be a good digital-intermediate to go from silver (film) to a silver print?

 

[jwcat]

Not exactly what you are asking, but I have seen a scanned 35MM B&W neg taken into photoshop, processed, and then printed to a 11x14 digital negative. This was then contact printed on FB air dried glossy. The results were beautiful.

 

[payasam]

Used to scan 6" by 4" prints before I got a scanner that can take negatives. Never printed over 12" by 8", though. The procedure you propose is similar to the one once used for picture postcards.

 

[Rogier]

Used to scan 6" by 4" prints before I got a scanner that can take negatives. Never printed over 12" by 8", though. The procedure you propose is similar to the one once used for picture postcards.

No answer to your question but what about creating a mask in PS using the filter colors for Multigrade paper. Print the layer with colors on a transparent and put it on top of your paper while exposing it.
Selective grades where you want them with repeatible results :angel:

 

[Roger Hicks]

Dear David,

Yeah, I tried something very like with 4x5 contact prints (REALLY sharp!). As there's a loss of quality at every step you take away from the negative, all you're doing is introducing another loss of quality at the scanning stage. It's very small with a good scanner, and may be more theoretical than real in many cases, but I saw no advantage in it.Then there's another (and probably greater) loss of quality at the final printing stage.

Cheers,

R.

 

[David_Manning]

Thanks for all the feedback and info. I've been searching online and came up with this:

http://www.scantips.com/basics08.html

The author is saying that no more info is coming off a print scan higher than 300dpi, so that is pretty much what I was trying to find out. Being thick-headed, I may still try for myself, but I'm not sure this process is what I'm after. It pretty much falls in line with what you said Roger.