Digital BW, The Print

On 10/3/02 10:03 PM, "Paul Roark" <paul.roark@...> wrote:

> Robert, you're getting almost as cynical as I am!
> 
> Well, I won't go quite so far as that.  I do, however, take what I hear with
> a big grain of salt.  Luckily we can test the inks for fading.

In Roark we trust...:-)...I certainly won't be using the new Cone blacks
until they pass the Roark test.

> I think the
> only real technology advance in black inks I've seen this year in my testing
> is the new UltraChrome matte black.

The rather disappointing thing about the matte black ultrachrome ink is how
poor it performs (dmax) on every paper other than EAM.  I'm still hoping
that the new Somerset paper has a EAM like coating on it so that we have a
rag paper that does well...but the poor performance is rather limiting for
those that want a nice velvet finish print.   That said I just coated an
Ultrachrome print on Museo today.  The dmax went from a very poor 1.48 to
silver-like 2.13 as measured by my spectrocam.  Past experience tells me
that the real dmax is well over 2.5 (I'm getting a real densitometer in a
couple of days so I will be able to give folks the real number).  This
possibility opens things up...but then again you could also just print on
Epson Luster.  The dmax is only around 2.0...but the prints still look
pretty good.

Robert