Digital BW, The Print

Martin,

You wrote:

>...
>I gave the Neutral Full Spectrum inks a try using hand filled
>virgin carts from MIS and the Conetech Piezography driver.

>Finally a new color of Piezo print! ...

Yes, I thought we needed some new tones.

>First off the shades of gray are an excellent match to the Piezo inks. ...

Let me know how the various paper profiles work.  There is a chance the some
papers will have different characteristics with the MIS pigments than they
do with the Piezo ink.  With the papers I use, they seem right on.

>Second while this is a welcome addition to what is available
>and I much prefer it over the color of the Piezo ink,
>I do not find it to be truly neutral. To my eye the tone was cool ...

Yes, it is a bit cool.  I've suggested to MIS that they might consider
calling it "FS-cool."

>... Not as cool as MIS VM with Paul's neutral cool curve but similar.

I find it more neutral than the vm-nc curve.  I assume we are all getting
the first production sample, but maybe MIS mixes really small batches.  Is
your sample cooler than the vm-nc curve?  (I test on EAM.)

> I found it very close to an un-toned silver print which I think will
please >a great many people.

The target was the average tone of a Kodak Polymax Fine Art, toned for 3
minutes in selenium 1:19 (my standard procedure for silver printing).

>The prints on EAM looked more neutral than the several
>Hahnemuhle papers I tried.

I don't test on Hahnemuhle.  I've noticed with some of the papers I do use
that the tone will vary with paper -- and it's more than just the tone of
the paper coming through the highlights.  The inks and coatings seem to
react in different ways.

Frankly, that is one of the big advantages of the VM system.  You may have
noticed the post I made the other day about balancing the "warm" curve for
the VM-sepia inkset.  Very small amounts of toner in the base ink -- which
is the same as the FS-N -- allowed me to come up with a very neutral print.
I think that fine tuning is important for those of us who are picky.  And, I
think each paper and printer type needs it.  Realistically, those who learn
how to tweak the curves are going to be able to fine tune their systems and
get closer to the tones they want than the standardized inks or curves will
be able to do.

>One of the problems with getting a "selenium toned silver fiber" print
color >is that there is a HUGE range of variation in the color of
>selenium toned prints ...

Yes.  The people I talked to liked the lightly-toned ones.  So, that was the
target.

>... the Oriental Seagull is cool in the highlight and a little purple in
the >shadows.

This is closer to what most like.  The original target for the inkset is a
hair magenta.  Frankly, MIS missed the target slightly.  I haven't looked
into why yet.

The cooler shadows are a problem for the black ink we have.  It's a hair
warm.  I'm going to be trying to make a neutral ink that might help here.

>I want to stress that this is all extremely subtle.
>If you sit down and surround yourself with just NFS prints the
>effect is very neutral.

>So, Paul, how about a chocolate toned FS? Seriously, I know you have posted
a >formula for a Sepia toned FS but I think that there is room for a couple
>of more shades of FS inks.

The sepia seemed to be the next thing on the list.  MIS has to be convinced
from the user market, however, that there is enough demand to bother with
yet another ink.  So far I have not heard any interest from their part.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com