In case you haven't seen it already, let me draw your attention to a thought-provoking piece by my colleague Jon Severs about the use of digital printing in fine art reproduction.

Its publication has resulted in a couple of readers expounding their views online, and some huffing and puffing from the direction of the litho establishment directed at us here in the PrintWeek office.

I found it an informative article, and it's clear that there are some outmoded and dare I say Canute-like views about what digital printing can and cannot do. I noted the reader remark below Jon's piece about digital print in general not being so hot on flat or graduated tints, and thought I would take this up with Francis Atterbury at Hurtwood Press, who was quoted in the piece.

The reason being that I remembered sending Francis a note a while back upon seeing the Hurtwood-produced book of Bridget Riley's Complete Works, which features a reproduction of her '19 greys' print. Dear printers, can you imagine a worse job?

Anyhow, I know the Riley book was litho printed, and I wondered if that was because digital simply wouldn't be able to hack it for the tonality involved in such subject matter. Not at all, Francis informs me. "We could have done it digitally using two blacks or a special colour - don't forget that most of the digital presses I'm using have seven or eight units. We didn't use digital simply because of the run length required."

Revealingly Francis also finds it slightly irritating when his digitally-printed books are lauded as being 'of litho-like quality', because as far as he's concerned for some work - particularly that on uncoated papers - it's litho that should be aspiring to digital quality.

Of course, he is operating in a specialist area of print far removed from sticking a job on a bog-standard digital device and finding oneself disappointed with the resulting tint work.

But let's take expert views such as this on board, challenge our prejudices, and learn from the lessons of history - remember it's not that long ago that litho was considered the poor relation to letterpress, and look what happened there.