Now you’re talking!
That 153 is a primo shade. Now try adding a dark gray to bend the black.

hhp

Hrant,

Thank you for your continued feedback. It is with no small amount of sheepishness however, that I must ask you to explain just a little more about bending the black with dark gray.

I think I know what you mean, but am not sure…

“Bending the black”: I’ve concluded that -unlike in a “dumb” automatic algorithm- shades of gray don’t ideally work as in a continuum — different shades have qualitatively different functions. A medium gray (like your 153) works in an expected way perhaps (creating the illusion of part of a pixel), but a dark gray is much more “subvisible” — it creates a hint of the black softening up, usually in “preparation” of an adjacent medium gray. As for light grays, try to avoid them (since they create the most blur), but sometimes they still become the whole point of the exercise, oddly enough. Hard to explain…

hhp