Re: palladium vs. cyanotype sharpness—link to comparison

Mark,
The two papers were the exact same. I even made sure that (one paper,
either Platine or Crane's Parchmont Wove, has a different texture on the
front vs. the back, one side is decidedly smoother) my palettes were printed
on the front of the paper.

I checked my Epson 2200 negative under the loupe and the pixels are
pixels...on Pictorico, no black ink. I printed it exactly as your book
describes--360 dpi, 2880, etc. etc. I think the slight bleed between the
pixels from the target is more likely, at that microscopic level, the
negative not being vacuum tight to the paper, because of the hills and
valleys of the paper. I just have contact printing frames, no vacuum easel
:(

I think perhaps why gum is not as sharp as cyanotype at the one pixel level
is that the layer hardens between those dots, and therefore doesn't slough
off but holds--a good thing in general for gum, but not a necessary thing
for cyanotype. With the gum targets, you can see that happening at the
larger targets, too, in spots.
Chris
(BTW the targets comparing gum and cyano are squished from top to bottom on
the front page...)

Mark asked:
I'm assuming that the two papers were comparable in texture? They look
pretty much the same to me in terms of sharpness. One thing to note, my
guess is
that the prints look very much like the negative—that what appears as not
sharp in these prints was actually not sharp in the negative. As I
mentioned in
an earlier post, a 1 pixel grid like this is very difficult for many output
devices to render. Also the dithering action of the printer driver works
against you when trying to render the checkerboard.
Received on Wed Sep 21 06:57:28 2005