Digital BW, The Print

Andr\ufffd,

You wrote:

>... started printing,with an Epson 980,MIS VM-Quads and Paul's
>curves for the 1160,which seems to be the best matching. ...

I'm not familiar with the 980.

>1. Even in EAM,using neutral curves,though I have a good screen-print
>match,it lacks a little snap,a little contrast.
>Any kind of Paul's curve tweeking could improve it?

One thing the curves do is give separation between the darkest values.
Sometimes the 95% & 100% print the same with other workflows.  This might be
one source, however, of lower apparent midtone contrast with the vm curves.

I try to get the steps of the 21-step test file print to be evenly spaced.
Then if in a particular photo I want more contrast in the midtones, I do
this as part of the editing in Photoshop.

(I'm not sure if this is responsive to your concern.)

>2. Paul's definitions include sRGB color space.Why not
>Adobe RGB,that has a wider gamut?

The sRGB is really just a matter of history and trying to find a way to
easily have all the settings be the same.  So, the Photoshop 5 Default top
setting seemed, at the time, to be a way to do this.

Adobe RGB (1998) is now more often used, so I'm tending to specify that now.

The difference is in the mapping of the gray values to the RGB values when
the file is converted to RGB for printing.  sRGB tends to compress the
shadow tones.

>3. I like EAM for matte paper,but  which could be the
>better choice for a paper that resembles RC photographic
>paper. ...

Check Robert Morrison's posts on this.  I think he is recommending a sprayed
Brightcube Semi Matte.

>I also care about archival qualities.

I have not tested any of the glossy type papers for fading.  Also, the more
difficult issue of long term dark storage is beyond what I can test for.
Many look for "acid free" papers for this.  I think I'm leaning toward the
Eclipse papers for this purpose.  Although the blacks were not quite as good
as EAM, an Eclipse test strip was the only one I've tested that did slightly
better than EAM in the fade testing.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com