Digital BW, The Print

Hello

I've recently been trying out quite a bit of printing on an 1160 with Lyson
Quad black inks. I thought that I'd post some of my thoughts, in the hope
that they might be of interest to people thinking of trying them (or even to
find that someone has solved some of the problems) Please feel free to
comment (although not perhaps with the vigour of some recent topics on the
list ... :-))

The Lyson QB range was relatively easy for me to obtain in the UK (an
important feature) and they have helpful distributors a (local) phone call
away. I was looking to produce B/W prints up to A3+ that I'd be happy to
have on my wall at home. Images were scanned in from 35mm using a Canon
FS4000, giving good quality scans at 4000 dpi and 14bit greyscale depth. All
work on the files was carried out using Photoshop 6 on a Mac.

Lyson recommend printing 8 bit RGB versions of the files with no colour
adjustment, and with the print space set at GreyGamma 1.8  There are no
paper profiles available from Lyson for the quad blacks on an 1160 (big hint
perhaps from Lyson?). I used glossy film as the setting for Lyson 265g Satin
Pro paper. I experimented with several other papers, but found that the
Lyson paper could give very pleasing results.

My first introduction to quad (neutral) black was something of a shock when
I took a print from my daylight lit server/printer room through the house to
my office. What looked fine, suddenly became very warm on the tungsten lit
stairs. With more work though I have come to appreciate the smoothness of
tones and slight warmth - with some subjects. Many of the negatives I worked
on were landscape subjects which compared very well with some of my
previous, rather contrasty 'real' prints. I would add that I've probably
never had the patience to perfect my 'wet' printing, so perhaps this
reflects more on my deficiencies in that area.

While my artistic side was pleased with the misty Scottish lochs and
sweeping vistas, the technical side was creating step wedges in Photoshop
and trying them on different papers and settings. I posted some queries
(excerpt below) about Lyson QB some time ago, but the lack of response led
me to think that either I was the only one using them, or that the problems
I mentioned  were peculiar to my set-up (maybe it was a slack day and nobody
read much on the group :-))

>Looking at a 95/96/97/98/100 wedge. Each division is clear, but there appears
>to be a larger step in density between 97% and 98% such that from normal
>viewing distances the wedge looks to be only two tones. This showed in one
>image as slight posterisation of a shadow area. I¹ve tried some adjustment
>curves, but that step is very difficult to smooth. This effect is present to
>some extent on all papers I tried.

This problem with the blacks on my printer actually makes some images look
quite dreadful, but in looking into it I¹ve learnt a lot about Photoshop,
inks, paper and print drivers.

The most favoured explanation is the lack of a paper profile and the Epson
driver being rather abrupt in its decision as to when to lay down black ink.
I could get a custom profile I suppose, but I simply do not have the money
for such experimentation (not that I begrudge the cost of the work, I just
don¹t have that sort of money spare)  Adjustment curves and workflows just
don¹t seem to hack it.

One technique that might be of use to some, where you have a few dark
shadows that are standing out as too black:
using Photoshop:
1 use the magic wand to select all 0,0,0 pixels with a tolerance of 2-5
2 copy these pixels to a new layer
3 use a levels layer on the dark pixels to raise the black point by 5-8
4 add 1-2% uniform noise to the dark pixel layer

This has the effect of adding in a bit of diffusion in to the dark pixel
areas and killing off the posterisation. The values in the steps above vary
with the subject matter, for example isolated black pixels do not cause
problems so I tend to get rid of them in the Œdark pixel¹ layer.

Any other ways of doing this gratefully acceptedŠ

I now have numerous nice prints about the house and have even sold a few to
friends ( I¹m out of work at the moment, so I have to pay for the ink and
paper somehow ;-))  The QB ink set has enabled me to produce prints of
­some- negatives that I am happy with, but several that just don¹t work.

Having just received some samples from a Lyson distributor of prints on an
1160 using the small gamut ink set, I¹ve a cartridge of it ready to test
when the QB runs out, it ­has- paper profiles and it currently outsells QB
by quite some margin. Perhaps QB has a relatively limited lifetime ahead of
it? 

If anyone uses QB and wants to discuss it off list, please feel free to drop
me a line. <k.a.cooper@...> For example does anyone know of an
inexpensive (moneywise - not time and effort) way for me to produces a paper
profile?

Bye for now

Keith Cooper, Leicester, England