Digital BW, The Print

Alan,

You wrote:

>I have looked at the custom tinting section on the MIS pages and have a
>question.

First, let me disclose that I've never really spent any time looking at the
tinting section of the MIS website.  I think it just has some small sizes or
MIS Archival color pig on it.  It is not related to the MIS VM system that I
have been involved with.

>  As I understand it the hue for making a custom-toned ink set is
>controlled only in the yellow position.

You can use any position you like if you are coming up with your own system.

In the VM system the toner is in the yellow spot.  However, in hextone
machines, the magenta and light magenta are the toner positions.  The reason
for the original position was that the MIS VM system started as the Piezo VP
system, and the lightest ink was just discarded in favor of the toner.  In
the hextone machines, however, the magenta is used so that the light/photo
position could be taken advantage of.

>If one were making a Van Dyke or sepia set of inks wouldn't the darkest
>value of brown then become the "black" base from which all the other tints
>are made?

Hmm, not sure what you're saying here.  It sounds like you want to come up
with a full, non-variable sepia inkset.  (I published a rough draft of an FS
sepia inkset the other day.  If you are interested in an FS-Sepia, contact
MIS and ask for it.)  I still used the VM black to get dark tones.  I don't
think that I could mix a brown ink that came close to that depth of tone.
It may be that there is a black ink that is much warmer than VM K, but I
just don't know.  As a practical matter, one doesn't see much color in the
dark tones, so the VM K in the VM-sepia prints looks fine.

>In other words I mix a batch of CMY to achieve sepia or brown, lower its
>value with black and use that for the tinting base.

See the formula I published.  What I did was get the cyan ink the sepia tone
I wanted (dark, strong sepia).  The cyan is the base of the FS inks in that
the magenta and yellow can be mixed by simply diluting the cyan.  I have the
dilution ratios noted in my post.  Then, what you get is an inkset that will
use all the FS/Piezo compatible workflows.

With the VM-sepia, I find that the full-on sepia is good mostly with old
photo reproductions.  For the Mission San Miguel shot I'm finishing now, I
prefer the "cold" curve.  With the VM-sepia, that gives a nice brown that is
less sepia than the ultimate sepia tone.

The plan for the FS-sepia I mixed was to come up with a very sepia tone that
would be appropriate for the old photos, but you can also mix it with
straight FS (same density) and come up with lesser sepia tones easily
without having to worry about the density problem.

To experiment with mixing ratios, just count drops into a bottle cap, mix,
and swab on a sample of the paper you use.  The ink-drop ratio will get you
quite close.

Starting from scratch to get the density of inks correct for a workflow is
not a trivial task.  My goal with the FS-N (actually a hair cool) and
FS-sepia was to provide cool and warm-end inksets that would be useable
as-is, but also as mixers with standard FS.  This approach avoids  the
starting-from-scratch problems that one might face just looking at the MIS
"tinting" section.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com