Digital BW, The Print

Nicholas,

Your results certainly do not coincide with mine. The VM black ink is about the blackest ink out there,
even a hair blacker than piezo. There are absolutely no dots in my prints, using Paul's curves and VM inks.
There is no banding, unless your heads need aligning or your nozzles need cleaning! No posterization,
either.

THere is something wrong with your system, somewhere.


> but on
> close inspection the image nevertheless consists of a patchwork of
> variously-sized areas rather than an assemblage of identically-sized dots.
> I find this very disturbing and un-photographic. I tried downsampling the
> image to exactly 360 ppi, but the results were the same.

> And finally, yes, the black-only output looks coarse next to either of the
> quadtone methods. It's particularly bad right now because the MIS VM black
> is quite weak:

No, this is not true. Do a dip and dunk test of every black ink you can get your hands on. The VM ink is
the blackest. Practically identical to generations Beta Black. Both are deeper than Piezo, but we're REALLY
splitting hairs here, it is only barely noticeable. These inks are all very good.

The Original Epson Black is the deepest, but of course not archival.

MIS VM: great inks, clever tonal-adjustment concept; BUT patchy output and

> dots in highlights.

Absolutely not. No dots and no patchy output. Again, something is wrong with your system.

>
> PiezoBW: fast, convenient output procedure, excellent tonality; BUT inks
> are far too warm and keep fading, and nozzle clogs are unacceptable (I have
> had NO clogging problems with the MIS inks).

I've never had a clogging problem with Piezo Black and white inks, and I've never seen them fade. THe PAPER
you print on shifts color long before the piezo inks change. There are several papers that piezo inks do
fade on, but not on the ones I've been using. (If a print can withstand 2 months in a south window without
visible color shift, It's okay in my book)

>
> Please tell me if this is a solution: I get the impression that the MIS
> Full Spectrum inkset is _functionally_ identical to the PiezoBW inks (same
> ink strengths in the same positions). I also gather from MIS's web site
> that their inks can be _tinted_ using their colored inks. So why not tint
> each of the MIS Full Spectrum inks sufficiently to balance their inherent
> warmness, load them into cartridges, and print through the PiezoBW export
> plug-in?

Because of the incredible amount of time and effort this will take. Their variable tone inks are wonderful.
You must find out what is wrong with your system. you are the only one that seems to have ever mentioned
any of these problems with the MIS variable tone inks!

Jerry