Abstract

With the shift from silver halide film to pixels, the possibilities for photofinishing have burgeoned as well. Not much more than a decade ago, photography was a process involving the recording of images on film and the printing of these images on silver halide paper. Today the majority of images are now captured digitally, and though digital silver halide certainly remains an important player in the photofinishing market, a great many images are printed at home on ink jet printers. Images are also being printed in forms other than 4 x 6 in. prints. Electrophotographic printing technology is being used to generate photo books, cards, and calendars. In addition, wide-format ink jet and, eventually, high-speed ink jet, afford still other opportunities. It is of interest, then, to understand the perceptual image quality being achieved using the various printing technologies today. The objective of this project is to evaluate the perceived image quality of ink jet and electrophotographic photo finishing relative to digital silver halide. Targets generated to resemble photo album pages, along with a variety of photo books, were used in this study. The observers for this project were selected to represent typical consumers rather than individuals who are more skilled in image evaluation. The results indicate that: the observers generally found higher value in the full-size photo books and ink jet prints relative to the electrophotographic prints and the Pocket Portfolio mini photo book; that first-person images did not rank substantially differently from third-person images—at least for images that did not contain humans; and that the photo print format had a more significant impact on the assigned value than the image content.

Publication Date

2011

Document Type

Full-Length Book

Comments

RIT Printing Industry Center (CIAS) research monograph

Department, Program, or Center

Printing Industry Center (CIAS)

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

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