Digital BW, The Print

Jerry,

First off, I really only tried this around four times, so I don't really
recommend it as anything other than something to mess with for now, plus it
makes for a laborious (masking and running through the printer twice)
process which one would hope to avoid for most prints. But it did work for
my tests, so it may be nice once in a while - as needed.

> Todd, can you get consistently perfectly registered prints if the paper gap is
> tight enough?

So far it's been perfect on my 4 tries, using the 1160 with EAM. I didn't
make the gap too tight for fear of paper drag. I went with just snug. Other
papers/printers may be different.

>> One more thing. This means some of those old papers, which failed on the
>> blacks, might have new life.
>> 
>> Todd


> Todd, how many pixels did you feather your mask for the blacks?
> 
> I'll try this!

My down and dirty mask for my image with the large black expanse was to go
to color range, select shadows from the dropdown menu, then I applied curves
to the alpha channel to further define the range, then painted out some
areas which were included but I wanted excluded, then a 1 pixel Gaussian
blur. With this mask loaded as a selection, I loaded my composite channel
image, and did CMD+C to copy the image that was selected by the mask, then
pasted that into it's own layer. Then I just printed that layer (background
turned off) with the VT curves. There's no doubt other ways too.

I'll be off list till tomorrow, but let me know how it goes!

Todd

> 
>> Here I go, answering myself, as usual. Okay, after I wrote the stuff below I
>> happened two print two grayscales which overlapped, and sure enough, max
>> black was denser where the two overlapped. So I tried it on an image that
>> has some large black expanses - the one I used for the first piezo exchange
>> in fact. Yes, rather noticeable difference.
>> 
>> Ya hearin' me Jerry? BLACKER BLACKS! Perfect registration on my 1160 with
>> the paper guide set just snug.
>> 
>> It's all in the right mask. Where you allow the overprint to cut off, and
>> curtail spill-over into unwanted areas. I happen to like masks, but for
>> those who don't, but like good blacks, this might be reason enough to pull
>> that PS book off the shelf for review. ;-)
>> 
>> Todd