When you create your photographic image and edit it into the creative vision you seek, you will be stunned when you review that image in print a few months later.
We all get blinded by the excitement of how our image is progressing towards the final end result of a print. But later you may realize that your focus of your creativity was too narrow and in many cases you may have missed some important characteristics of your print.
Usually it is too contrasty and too dark. Increase in contrast gives your prints pop but also gives you extremes of light and dark to the point later when you are shaking your head and wondering what the hell were you thinking. Light transition in the print is gone. The brights are harsh, the midtones are slammed into a brutal grey which projects no subtlety whatsoever and the shadows are not dark but absolutely black. Now this is an extreme example but every photographer needs to re-examine their prints and based on your developing experience and technical editing abilities, you will probably find areas that need definite improvement. Keep your original images and re-edit from the original raw file and compare the final images. Many times the images will be close and it just depends on your artistic emotion at the time on which image you find the best. It may also depend of the developing sophistication of the software you are using. I use Nik Silver Efex for my black and white editing and the change in their control points has allowed one to closely edit every part of the area you want to edit without going through the tedious and unintuitive editing of layers, masks, etc. Silver Efex seems very natural and intuitive to me because of my previous work in a darkroom. Just like I prefer to talk to somebody in person rather then communicating in the senseless, barren and idiotic chamber of Facebook or Instagram. I grew up without cell phones or a personal computer and you could still have a phone with an ear piece and the mouth piece attached to the phone.
I had problems a few months ago with Windows 10 and I lost a folder of specially toned images. The non toned images were backed up on an external hard drive and all the original raw files and edited raw files were all backed up. So I am now re-editing the images, discovering a new tone combination in Epson Advanced Black and White which gives me the tone I had in my silver based prints. Also the prints are a dramatic improvement in editing and emphasizing different areas with contrast that I did not do before. Different tones are more realistically portrayed because of the increased complexity of the control points in Nik Silver Efex. I am now re-examining all my digital images and printed images which is forcing me to ruthlessly re-edit. This process should be incorporated at every level of a print creation. Honestly you cannot be critical enough as long as you are reacting to your own critical vision and not somebody's worthless opinion.