David wrote:
... No one sought neutral prints in the distant past of the analog photograph. ...
Actually, I liked the relatively neutral lightly selenium tones Kodak's fiber based Polymax. My efforts with my early inks was to be able to match them well enough to hang them together in mixed shows. The Lab B (yellow-warm on the plus side, blue-cool on the negative side) stayed at about the paper white, until going negative in the deep shadows. The Lab A (redish-warm [or slight purple or magenta] on the plus side, greenish on the negative side) was raised by the selenium. I think most people like a slightly positive Lab A to get what they'd call neutral. Most of the modern papers have that.
Today's brightest natural inkjet papers are close to the "cool" FB darkroom papers. So, while I no longer feel any need to match those, I like to have a "neutral" looking B&W print on the wall and find that a rise of about 2 Lab B units above the paper white does this. For reference, a one lab unit difference is barely perceptible even in a side by side comparison.
...Epson’s K, LK and LLK are (I believe) pure carbon inks, or close to it.
I think all the OEM "neutral"/gray inks are all blends of carbon plus color pigments. In my view the Epson LK and LLK have too much cyan in them. I use the HP Z3200 PK diluted inks for "cooling" my warmish (elevated Lab B) carbon inks.
MIS MK ("Eboni"), PK, LK, and LLK are pure carbon.
The OEM MKs may also be pure carbon. They look like it and test as very strong.
> ... The closest you can get with ABW to a neutral print without hidden color inks is the “warm tone” setting in ABW, which I understand is supposed to use only the K inks, but knowing what I do now, I would bet money that is not really the case.
I think only HP goes to total or mostly LK and LLK. The Epson ABW may put in more yellow to get the warmth higher. They want to use the color inks, in part I believe, because they can get a smoother print by using more channels of ink firing. That may be a weakness of the OEM systems when a rip is used to put in the minimum amount of color needed to tone the LK and LLK. With a well running system the 2 grays and one black can look fine, but a less than perfect printer running at less than the top quality setting may run into problems sooner when the color inks are not all firing.
The Eboni carbon that David and I use is for Epson printers only.
I agree with those who recommend the Bowhaus rip for the Canon. That is the route I'd try before trashing the expensive printer, though in the long run if you're really into B&W you may want to make the switch to Epson.
Paul