Digital BW, The Print

I went through the same process myself, but I was never able to get 
really good results from the Gray Balancer. Even if the print looked 
neutral in one light, the print still had the wrong colors in another.

The best result I got before trying PowerRIP was a custom curve I 
made in Photoshop combined with the Lepp profile. It looked pretty 
good in indoors lightning, but green in daylight of course.

iProof have a free demo on their site, www.iproofsystems.com, it 
prints a watermark at the centre of the page, but otherwise works 
fine. 

--- In 
DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "carlislematthew2000 
<carlislematthew@h...>" <carlislematthew@h...> wrote:
> I'm currently in the middle of tweaking my Gray Balancer curves to 
> try and get neutral grays.  It's a pain in the ass and I must have 
> got through about 30 pages of test prints so far!!  I keep 
> adding/removing magenta, adding another control point, re-printing 
> and so on.  I'm getting closer to a good result, but the closer I 
get 
> the harder it is to do that final step.  
> 
> I don't have any PowerRIP, or RIP software, and actually don't know 
> much about that stuff.  Am I really missing out?  Am I wasting my 
> time screwing around with GB and printing ICM?
> 
> Also, how it is possible that you have no metamerism at all?  I 
> thought the slight metamerism on the 2100/2200 was due to an 
inherent 
> ink issue and not something that could be removed by tweaking?  Or 
is 
> it the case that certain inks change color more than others and 
> you've created a special ink-recipe that makes these effects cancel 
> each other out in different lighting?  
> 
> As I write the printer churns out another test page from the GB 
> software....  Any information, help or advice given is very 
> gratefully received.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
>   Matthew
> 
> 
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "danielstaver 
> <daniel@p...>" <daniel@p...> wrote:
> > I've spent some time now creating a curve for PowerRIP that gives 
> me 
> > totally neutral BW prints on my 2100, good shadow detail and no 
> > metamerism whatsoever.
> > 
> > The results are actually so good I'm not sure where to go from 
> here. 
> > Maybe some tweaking in the 0-25% area which may or may not be 1-
2% 
> > too dark.
> > 
> > I've been using the Epson Gray Balancer reference chart to make 
> > comparisons between the chart and printed wedges while making 
> > adjustments. The biggest change I had to make was in the 93-100% 
> area 
> > which all printed black. I now get very good separation in that 
> area 
> > as well. After making the curve I did a scan of an August Sander 
> > photo from a book I got for christmas and made a print with my 
> curve 
> > to verify. The print is virtually indistinguishable from the book 
> in 
> > both daylight and indoors lightning.
> > 
> > If anyone is interested I'm sure I could make the curve available 
> so 
> > you have something to play around with if you decide to try the 
> > program.
> > 
> > I've never actually had the chance to see a really good BW print 
> with 
> > any type of inking system so I'm very interested to see how this 
> will 
> > compare to the other prints in the upcoming exchange.