Digital BW, The Print

I just completed a paper screen with the new Selenium Piezotones.  My intent
is to share my impressions of the relative tone of the Seleniums on various
papers and then put them in perspective to the Neutral Warm Piezotones. In
addition, I'd say that the MIS FS-N inks are blue and cool and the original
Cone inks and MIS FS inks are warm (when fully warmed over the course of
several weeks) when compared to my "Cool" and "Warm" labels below.

My observations are based on observing a continuous gray ramp, a gray wedge
and two test prints printed with custom profiles for Imageprint.  All prints
were produced with an Epson 7000.

I have also read dmax for these paper/ink combinations.  I'm sharing
relative black ratings instead of actual dmax figures...because of
variability between various densitometers.  I'm reading dmax with the
density setting on my spectrocam spectrophotomer.  5 is the top rating for
black and 1 is the bottom rating.  The spread on my spectrophotometer is
about .25 dmax units.  It is difficult to see differences in black of 1
unit...but you can see the difference in 2 units.  Also by way of reference,
the best black that I got with the piezo driver and FS or the original cone
inks would have been a 3 on Photorag...Osprey would have been a -2.
Somerset Velvet (uncoated Iris paper) on the old inks would have been about
-4 and -2 with the new inks.

Here are the papers listed from Cool to Warm with black ratings at the end.

Cool
SelPT--Brightcube Eclipse Velvet or Satine Bright White--1 black
SelPT--Epson Archival Matte (Epson Enhanced Matte)--4 black
SelPT--Hahnemuhle Photorag (Media Street Royal Renasainse)--4.5 black
SelPT--Hawk Mountain Merlin--2 black
NWPT--Epson Archival Matte (Epson Enhanced Matte)--4 black
SelPT--Hawk Mountain Osprey--1 black
SelPT--Legion Somerset Enhanced--3.7 black
SelPT--Brightcube Eclipse Soft White--2 black
SelPT--Crane Museo--4 black
SelPT--Hahnemuhle William Turner (Media Street Royal Jazz, Conetech Wells
river)--5 black
NWPT--Hahnemuhle Photorag (Media Street Royal Renasainse)--4.5 black
NWPT--Hawk Mountain Osprey--1 black
NWPT--SelPT--Brightcube Eclipse Soft White--2 black
NWPT--Crane Museo--4 black
NWPT--Hahnemuhle William Turner (Media Street Royal Jazz, Conetech Wells
river)--5 black
Warm

Roughly speaking the tones of inks follow the whiteness of the paper.  The
Brightcube Bright White and EAM are loaded with optical brighteners and thus
are very white...the Photorag has the next largest quantity of
brighteners...etc.  Perhaps of greatest interest is the cross over where the
ink tone for the NWPT on EAM actually crosses into the SelPT lineup.  I've
had several other sets of eyes take a look at these prints and they
essentially agree with my ratings.

Hope this helps,

Robert