Digital BW, The Print

Carolyn,

After having some time to try out some of the suggestions in your 
workflow I have a couple of questions.

When you use multiple scans to control a high contrast image, do you 
have to do any special blending techniques with your layer masks to 
get a smooth transition from one to the other?

You wrote "... duplicate image layer, desaturate, invert, gausian 
blur a bit and then apply over original image layer with an overlay 
or soft light blend set from 10 - 30%." Is the 10-30% the 
layer "Opacity" or are you using the "Fill Opacity" in the "Advanced 
Blending" section? Or do they do the same thing?

What are your favorite papers to use with the Epson inks to get a B&W 
print?

You asked, "I am looking forward to trying out quad-tone inks... 
which would you recommend would be easiest to start out with?"

This is a hard choice. From a software point of view the PiezoBW inks 
and driver combination are the most user friendly. However they do 
seem to suffer from more "mechanical" difficulties in terms of ink 
clogging and sometimes require a good deal of patience for things to 
clear up.

The MIS VM would be the other choice. With Paul Roark's curves the 
software end is very workable but lacks a slick user interface. There 
is also a lack of ink/paper/printer curves at the moment but it does 
work great out of the box with Epson Archival Matte and the Legion 
Photo Matte. With your experience, tweaking a few curves to get what 
you wanted should not be a problem. (Which you could then share 
saving the rest of us lazy folks from having to do our own. <<G>>) 
The MIS inks do not seem to suffer the "mechanical" problems of the 
Piezo inks in terms of clogging.

Ink color is a very personal think. The Piezo inks are warm-neutral 
and the MIS VM inks can be adjusted to print very cold to warm 
depending upon the curve you use. If you contact inkjetmall.com they 
will send you a very small sample print of the Piezo inks.

In terms of cost the MIS is the least damaging to the pocket book to 
get into.

If you want to print on glossy rather than matte papers you should 
consider the Lincoln Inks Spectratone Quads. This is a dye based ink 
set, which has a very nice selenium tone to them. You can find their 
website in the "Bookmarks" section.

Regarding the CYMK workflow check back through Tyler Boley's posts. 
He has been doing just that for quite some time. Also check out Dan 
Culbertson's posts.

Thanks again for the info.

Martin