Digital BW, The Print

Antonis,

you wrote:
> >> as one whose main body of work is prints from 3200 bw  35mm film (Delta
or
TMZ), I have had no problems with grain and the piezo plug in with  the
1160/old piezo inks.  However, I've seen profile mismatches with the
1280/WT-PiezoTones using the old profiles.  That's another story - since
ConeTech no longer supports the product or makes profiles for their inks,
you
have to search by trial and error to see if something fits your paper of
choice.
<<<

I forgot to mention that I am using the 1160 with EAM for testing and
Photorag. I tried several profiles and what I could see is that some of them
show one or more discontinuties in the wedge, others are quite similar to
the one I am using (EAM on EAM) but the posterization in the midtones of my
prints remains. If it is a profile mismatch and you say that Cone is no
longer supporting the product for what have I and others paid? And the
profile "works" with the original step wedge but not with the noisy one. A
profile mismatch is something fundamental and should not work in both cases.

you wrote:
>>>  I suspect, then, that there is a profile mismatch somewhere in your
workflow.
Perhaps when you scan you scan for a different gamma or  tone curve or for a
monitor preview that requires funny adjustments of the image to print
properly.
Too many factors to get into. Just wanted to point out that you should
consider
the other stages in the workflow before you conclude that it's the grain.
<<<

I adjusted the monitor preview according to the 21 step wedge. My data for
the gray workspace in PS are: in 10, out 18; in 90 out 97. Is that a funny
adjustment?

The printed 21 steps have densities: 0,00 0,04 0,08 0,12 0,17 0,22 0,28 0,34
0,38 0,46 0,53 0,61 0,70 0,79 0,87 0,97 1,09 1,21 1,34 1,46 and 1,60 on EAM.
Are these values in the normal range?


you wrote:
>>>  Also: adding noise to a gray scale hardly approximates a scan of a
grainy neg
or proves anything about the grain in and of itself being the problem.
<<<
It prooves how the system behaves under noisy conditions. If the driver is
very accurate but not too accurate to be able to resolve the grain fully it
could be a interference problem or moire problem between the grain "grid"
and the raster processing (during scanning a similar problem occurs). With
the 3500 ASA films you used this problem may not occur because the grain is
coarse enough to be resolved by the printer driver. All I say is that the
Epson driver has no problems with my scanned negatives and the step wedge
whereas the piezo driver shows a pretty abnornal density variation. And the
finding in the step wedge is exactly what I see in my prints. The 21 step
wedge has not been scanned by me. It is the original file plus the noise
filter. No gamma adjustment.


Peter


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