Digital BW, The Print

Richard,

Sorry for the delayed response, but I've been out of town.

You wrote:

>Saturday, July 27, 2002, 8:50:38 AM, Paul Roark wrote:

>PR> The super inkset, in my view, would be the PT midtones with the MIS FS
>PR> black.

>From reading your charts it seems the MIS FS-N black has less warming
>and fading than the MIS FS black so why not the PT midtones and the
>MIS FS-N black?  Or are the MIS FN black and MIS FS-N blacks the same
>(as I think perhaps I had heard here before?)?

The FS-N, FS, and VM blacks are all the same.  If you compare one test set
with another, there may be differences in results.  The paper makes a big
difference.  Also, however, there may be minor differences from one test
session to another.

>Also, if one sets up a CFS with the PT midtones and the MIS FS (or
>FS-N) black would there need to be any adjustments in the drives and
>curves used? i.e. if I currently use MIS-FS inks with the Piezo driver
>(and sometimes with Epson driver/Randall curves) will I also be able
>to use the same but with the PT midtones inks installed instead of the
>MIS-FS midtones?

I have not directly tried the PT inks, but my impression is that they may
have different densities than the original PiezoBW inks.  At some point I
will probably buy some PT-Selenium cyan and see what it's density is.  If,
as one test strip I've received suggests, it is denser than the original
PiezoBW cyan, I may experiment with diluting it to make it compatible with
the FS and original PiezoBW blacks.

Frankly, I think Cone Editions ought to market a PiezoTone "Museum" series
that uses the original PiezoBW black (which I believe is essentially, if not
exactly, the same as MIS FS/VM black) and the original densities (assuming
the new ones are slightly different -- which is uncertain to me).

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com