Digital BW, The Print

On 12/23/02 6:38 PM, "Charles Bandes <byronbulb@...>"
<byronbulb@...> wrote:

> I wonder - could the steps you're discussing (converting greyscale
> into sep files for CMYK printing) apply to the VM inkset as well as
> the more "standard" hex sets?

I think so.

Can you describe a VM workflow?  I'm curious how the (two?) inks are mixed
in.  I presume they're added in a density relative to the overall gray tone
-- that is, if you're printing a 20% gray, you get an equivalent 20% of the
toning inks.

I could see a bare-bones way of profiling VM inksets, whereby you mix the
toning inks ahead of time, and print stepwedges with those tones already
added to the neutral gray inks.  The stuff I'm working on measures densities
only, not colors, so it shouldn't care what tone you use.

There are probably better ways that are more flexible, but I can't get my
head around them at the moment.

> I've been really excited about the gimprint possibilities ever since I
> noticed the degree of control they offer, but sadly my tech-savviness
> is insufficient to really understand what all the knobs and levers do.

...and unfortunately many of the knobs and levers, at least for quad/hextone
work, are gummed up by invisible machines under the hood.  This is why I'm
trying to hook in more directly to the gimp-print driver, albeit at a
sacrifice (right now) to the user-interface of Photoshop.  In other words,
you can't just say "Print." :)

> If it would be at all helpful to have someone run tests on a 1280/VM
> combo, I'd be delighted to volunteer :)

Cool!

-- 
John Labovitz
johnl@...
www.johnlabovitz.com