Digital BW, The Print

forgot to say that I'm applying Pauls Curves to the file
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> try what I may I cant get rid of the lack of smoothness between the 
> tones in the cloudy sky section of a landscape shot. There's no 
point 
> in posting a jpeg for you to see 'cos it looks good on screen even 
at 
> 100% view but prints out like - i'm not even sure how to describe 
it -
> 'mottled' isn't exactly it but its close. This problem is most 
> evident in the area where a darkish cloud texture meets the lighter 
> sky texture.
> 
> I did my scan and most of the initial corrections in 16bit and then 
> some in 8. I'm working with Win98SE and PS7 and an 1160 printer 
with 
> MIS sepia>neutral inkset on photorag.
> 
> One symptom which may provide a clue for solving the problem, for 
> someone, is that I had Layers for darkening/burning in  the top of 
> the image and the corners. The problem was excessive. Then I 
> eliminated each of those layers (lighteninig the image segments) 
and 
> the problem reduced or just became less evident
> 
> I also have a High Pass sharpening layer - could that be it ?
> 
> I just looked at Image>Histogram and find it pretty "comb" like - 
is 
> this it ? Is it 'posterization' ? Should I go back to the 16 bit 
scan 
> and try to do more there before converting to 8 and printing ?
> 
> thanks
> Frank