Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., meander@m... wrote:
> You are more or less asking for the history of producing Quad tone 
> prints from an ink jet printer.

Martin and I were recently discussing how interesting it would be for someo=
ne to compile, there are certainly
many gaps in my knowledge of it. What an excellent 
post Jerry, I just have a few footnotes.

snip
> Dan Culbertson and Tyler Boley were producing workflows for the
3000 
> using MIS Quad tone inks on papers such as Somerset Velvet.

Dan was way ahead of me, and I was essentially trying to grasp all
the info he kept posting and make it work for me. I was 
so captivated and excited by what I was learning I tended to post a
lot, but I was definitely a follower. At this point, Dan and 
others reported less than satisfactory results with Icefields, so
though it was still available I never tried it.

A lot of 
> people were applying those workflows to the Photo Ex. It must be
said 
> that the prints produced were quite acceptable.

Really? It worked for somebody?!
> 
> In tandem with Dan and Tyler, people like Dan Burkholder and
Strange 
> Ross were developing work flows for more specific uses. ...

I think there are others that were working independently but quietly.
One was Jon Cone, he was developing and teaching 
similar techniques at his workshops. Obviously he is a leading quad
expert, culminating in Piezography and it's continued 
development. I'm sure there were other expert printers out there
perfecting similar workflows for there own purposes.

> At the risk of driving you into the depths of paranoia, one of the 
> problems that will never be solved is the inconsistency between 
> batches of paper. ..

This is a very good point. Another issue cropping up is that the
newest generation of Epsons have manufacturing 
tolerances (voltages, etc.) that are possibly too loose for the non
OEM materials and workflows we work with.

> Tyler´s post it looks like Icefield has been updated, perhaps he
has 
> more information about that.

There was an inquiry about it on the 9000 list, and I was interested
that there was the reply I mentioned. I don't know if it's 
actually been updated or simply still available. My lacking
understanding of it is that it created a 4 channel pre-screened 
(stochastic, as you mentioned) file, separated to work with the then
standard MIS set, postscript I would think.
A postscript RIP driver was then required to print it, no one was
happy with what was available at the time. I wonder what 
PressReady would do with it?
Tyler