Digital BW, The Print

"John" <jrnolly@...> wrote:
>

> ...it was frustrating to see the color balance of B&W change, from one media to another. We never thought of using colors in some channels to neutralize the media color shift.


One thing that makes these Claria/Noritsu dyes so interesting is that you can stay with a single toner -- LM -- and cover almost all papers with an appropriate neutral-cool tone.  This makes the profiling very easy.  It appears all that one needs to do is alter the LM toner ink limit a tiny amount to adjust to other papers.  

Note that the LM ink limit for in the "toner" channel of my current QTR profile is 0.5, compared to 17 (boost 22) for the black.  I am not using very much color.  Some think you can just use black only, but I like the toned approach better.  It's worth the little work it takes.

Note also that I'm mostly thinking of this for glossy papers.  Only HPR and Red River Premier Matte seem to have really good matte dmaxs.  In my Eb4 Plus setup, however, I can use Eboni for the MK as needed.  

Eb4 Plus (http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/Eboni-4-Plus.pdf) remains at the core of this effort.  The same profiles should work for Eb4 Plus and OEM Claria.   

 
> BTW you should be careful on your use of color though! Dye inks are notorious for interactions between colors, ...


By staying with the OEM inks, and not mixing or diluting, people to try this approach will not be making anything worse than the full color Claria that has been tested by Wilhelm and Mark.  And they are very satisfactory for many uses.


> We were using Ilford dyes, ...

I think the Epson Claria/Noritsu dyes give me the best performance and compatibility among the dyes I am familiar with. 200 years of dark storage, for example in a book, sounds OK to me.  This is not the old style dye.  When sprayed the black only Claria on Canson baryta is in the same league as the third party B&W blended/neutralized inks (unsprayed), as I read the Aardenberg-Imaging tests.

The new OEM-compatible approach I'm taking allows people to stay with stock OEM Claria.  As such, the existing tests are on point and directly applicable.  

It would be nice to have comparisons for the Noritsu and generic base dilutions. I personally think the inks Epson sells into the Noritsu dry lab market are the very same as Claria.  Dilution may affect lightfastness compared to full strength black only.  However, I doubt the dilute black is worse than the light color inks Epson has in the Claria hextone inkset, and those are not bad.

(Note that I also intend to continue to use and explore the dilute Noritsu, generic base approaches.  And 100% carbon is what I'll continue to use for my large display prints and wherever the best lightfastness and image stability is needed.)


Paul
www.PaulRoark.com