Paul,The HP Vivera MK is slightly warmer than the old Eboni was and might be as warm as the new Eboni is right now. Only the HP Vivera PK and Grey inks are near neutral and they may not mix correctly with any MK. The HP Vivera PK does not give a good Dmax on matte papers anyway.I meanwhile suspect that HP added the Quad media preset (MK, PK, Grey, Light Grey inks) to the Z models more to create a near neutral tone range on cooler/neutral papers than to create a smoother tone range by adding the PK. For warm papers the HP media presets do not have the PK aboard. Near Dmax all matte prints get the warmth of the Vivera MK.Th HP Vivera pigment Blue does not fit as a single cooling agent?So as I suspected in a message some time ago the purchase of Imaging Specialists by STS did influence the MIS products.
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst
Dinkla Grafische Techniek
Quad, piëzografie, giclée
www.pigment-print.comOn Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 5:30 AM, roark.paul@... [DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint] <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com> wrote:I've experimented with several ways to handle the new "Eboni-6 version 1.1" additional warmth. For a 100% carbon approach, using a second MK in the Y position worked fairly well. See draft PDF on this at http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/Carbon-Variable-Tone.pdf .
My latest investigation goes back to the color toner approach, making a "variable tone" Eboni-6, in effect. Here, given my emphasis on longevity, I looked for the best color pigments, using http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/ as my main source of information. While the HP neutral inks do very well, they are not cool enough to act as a toner that can pull the Eboni back to neutral and still leave enough room for a fairly full set of 100% carbon inks for smooth printing. Ideally, I9;d like a blue pigment that, without the aid of any other color pigment, offset the carbon warmth. Such a pigment is not available, however. The Canon Lucia EX "blue," may be as good as it gets. It has, however, a Lab A that is too high -- a purple-blue color. So, some cyan pigment is needed to offset this.
Where 2 pigments are needed to get to the right tone, the narrower the hue angle between them, the better. This should minimize the color drift along the Lab A axis. It turns out the Epson C has a very favorable color. In comparable draw-downs, the Canon Lab A & B are -20 and -49, respectively, whereas the Epson values are -7.6 and -53. Thus with the Epson I get much more offsetting blue relative to the negative Lab A (green). Epson cyan is almost a "blue" ink by itself.
So, the two pigments in the toner I'm now testing are Epson Cyan and Lucia Blue, with 2 parts Blue to 1 part Cyan. The color pigments are diluted 1:9 with generic base c6c. (See http://www.inksupply.com/roarkslab.cfm )
The toner is light enough that no dots are visible in a 2400 ppi scan of a 21-step test strip.
On the other hand, the gamut is high enough that not much color ink is needed. I've posted a PDF showing the Lab readings of a 21-test strip on Arches BW, with and without the toner -- not linearized so that the amount of Lab L density accounted for by the toner is visible in the Lab L graphs (on page 2). See http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/EbVT-ArchesBW-Neutral-v-Carbon.pdf
As a practical matter, the Lab L effects from the toner are minimal. Ultimately, the colors will fade faster than the carbon, and the different rates of fade will, no doubt, cause some drift on the Lab A axis as the print warms. With the relatively narrow hue angle between the Epson C and Canon Lucia B, and the high quality of the pigments, I think the drift will be within an acceptable range for even critical viewers. While cyan is usually stronger than the magenta or "blue" pigments, I note that the Epson neutrals do not experience a green shift. Frankly, none of us will live long enough to see a visible change in one of these prints if subject only to normal indoor lighting. My "guesstimate" from printing with toners that are nothing but 10% Epson C, the print will never get close to actually going to a negative Lab A (green). The Lucia Blue would have to disappear totally while more than half of the Epson cyan is still intact -- not going to happen. The Lucia EX Blue patch in the Aardenburg-Imaging test on H. Photo Rag at 140 Mlux-Hours of exposure has a very impressive total delta-e of 1.9.
Mixing Epson and Canon pigments was and is a question I'm looking at. So far no incompatibilities have been found. I've given both this toner and one made with only Canon Lucia C and B a centrifuge test. Both did exceptionally well. While the Epson-Canon/Lucia blend arguably did a bit better, it's probably too small a difference to be significant.
So, FWIW, I think these is a variable-tone solution to printing the highest quality matte prints. 100% carbon is going to be ultimately better, but this approach to neutral B&W probably provides the most longevity possible with today's materials.
Note that the glossy compatible carbon used by the OEMs takes much more color to neutralize, and aside from HP, the "Advanced B&W" approaches use much more than the minimum amount of color needed for neutralizing the carbon, since they are also using yellow ink in the mix.
Paul
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Re: [Digital BW] Toner for Eboni-6 -- Eboni variable tone inkset
2015-01-21 by Paul Roark
Ernst,
I leaned toward the Canon Lucia pigments for the current effort based on the superior Blue and Cyan patch tests in aardenburg-imaging.com. The test patches are not the pure inks themselves, but it's as close as we're likely to find publicly. The Lucia EX "Blue" patch at 120 MLux-hrs has a delta-e of 1.8 compared to the HP's 2.5.
I did not test the HP Blue, and perhaps I should. Is there a desktop unit that uses that ink? Buying the large carts just to do a test gets a bit steep, particularly since I really do not expect a perfect counterbalance to the carbon. The inkjet "blues" I have tested are all a purple-blue. The only blue I have found that is a near perfect counterbalance is the Dan Smith indanthrone (sp?) blue. But it would need proper preparing for inkjet uses, which requires scale economies that do not exist in B&W.
The HP MK is still warmer than Eboni.
STS claims to have not changed anything with the Eboni inputs, and they may be correct, in that the change may have occurred before STS acquired the company. What caused me to go direct to STS was that the last batch of Eboni from MIS was not the "old" Eboni either. When Walt ____, the founder of IS died, a lot of knowledge died with him. The STS Eboni input is, overall, a better ink than the last batch I bought from MIS prior to its purchasing the new STS version, which remains the "coolest" (least warm) of the carbon inks -- just not quite as "cool" as the original from Walt. As I've found repeatedly in my various pursuits, when the founders die, the companies that remain are not the same.
BTW, this beta "Eboni variable tone" inkset is Epson driver compatible. I have made profiles with PS curves that can be embedded in ICCs that will work on matte inkjet papers. With QTR (which is always the recommended approach and very necessary for watercolor papers) the advantages of cooling with some MK used all through the scale can be combined with the toner to get to dead neutral (essentially level Lab A and B) with even less toner. The bottom line I'm trying to reach is the highest carbon content and highest lightfastness for a truly neutral print with good smoothness, and I think this approach is the best I see with current technology. (But, of course, I have more things to test, but that is un-ending.)
Paul
On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 4:06 AM, Ernst Dinkla ernst.dinkla@... [DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint] <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com> wrote: