Re: Family snaps to gum bichromate
Hi Don, One thought that occurs to me is that I've heard that most consumer photo labs do their printing digitally now, so if you had 4x6 prints made, what you'd be scanning would be a digital print rather than a photo print. I used to scan and enlarge 4x6 prints, as you are proposing in option #2, with good results, but that was in the days when photo labs used a photo process to produce their prints. My experience scanning digital prints is that they don't tend to scan well, but then that's been more than 10 years ago so maybe you should check out current wisdom on this, or have one print made first and try scanning it, before doing a lot. I don't know how the price compares; I'd guess you'd be paying considerably more to scan negatives. If not, or if money is no object, I'd say scan the negatives. It might be fun to experiment with making color separations using a slide copier and filters, but if you're not already skilled at tricolor gum printing, and if tricolor gum prints are your object, I wonder if it makes sense to add another layer of complexity to the process of getting there. My understanding is that current wisdom says that 360 is the optimal file resolution for producing digital negatives for any process, not just gum. If that collective wisdom has changed, I trust someone will set me straight. Katharine On Apr 12, 2007, at 4:03 PM, Don Sweet wrote: I would be grateful for guidance on this topic (details of which are covered in the archives I know).
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