Digital BW, The Print

Peter,

I am glad to hear you are up and printing!

Over the weekend Paul gave me some new curves. These are true 
neutral. Not cool neutral or warm netural. These have proved to be 
exactly what I was looking for and I have produced the most 
satisfying ink jets prints I have managed in 10 months of trying!

The really wonderful thing about these curves is that they printed 
well on a very large range of paper. I made prints on EAM, Legion 
Photo Matte, Eclipse Satine, Hahnemule Photo Rag, Museo, German 
Etching, Torchon, Epson Heavy Weight Matte. All gave good results and 
while image adjustment is needed on some of them it is minor.

By printing right at the neutral point the tone of the prints are 
dominated by the color of the paper. The tone is similar to using the 
mono-ink methods we were discussing a couple of weeks ago.

Also note that Paul feels that the cool neutral is a better choice as 
it will end up more neutral after the characteristic warming of the 
prints. Pesonally I believe I would prefer to have the print start 
neutral and then shift warm rather than start blue, pass through 
neutral to warm.

These are matters of personal taste and what is wonderful is that 
there is choice with this system!

So for the Epson 1280 running under Windows 2000 I have hit a point 
of operation that for me surpasses anything else I have tried. 
(Please keep in mind that there is a great deal of variation between 
printer models and a apparently a lesser variation between the Epson 
driver for Mac and PC platforms.)

We also need to keep in mind that there is probably enough difference 
between two printers of the same model to require some individual 
curve tweaking for each printer. This is true for all the 
software/ink systems. Perhaps the higher end 7000 and 9000 printers 
will have less variability.

The situation with MIS VM and the availability of curves seems to be 
improving rapidly. Mike Kravit is working on curves for the 7000 in 
addition to Paul's efforts. I think that in a short time workable 
curves for the 1160, 1200, 1280, 3000 and 7000 will be available on 
one or both platforms.

In exchanging e-mails with Paul, he noted that there may not as much 
latitude in the slider adjustment for the 1280, and other 6-color 
printers, as in the 1160 and 3000 4-color printers. Obviously the RGB 
to CcMmCK conversion in the Epson driver is more complicated and 
seems unpredictable at this point. There is also some difficulty with 
the warm curves for the 1280 that Paul is looking at.

Even with these limitations, which have a reasonable chance of being 
solved, the MIS VM system is developing to a most usable ink set.

Martin Wesley


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., Peter Lindman 
<plindman@q...> wrote:
> Martin,
> Just wanted to let you know that I've had a couple of pretty good 
days
> printing with the MIS VM inks after retrieving the curves you 
posted and
> that Paul Roark emailed to me following my post of frustration 
Friday.
> The neutral-cool curve worked extremely well for me right out of the
> box…prior to that I had been experiencing posterization in the 3/4
> tones. The cool curve and the medium-warm curve have also worked 
quite
> well though I haven't put them through the same paces as the 
neutral as
> of yet. I haven't tried the others yet.
> 
> All-and-all my best time with quad printing thus far, working with
> Polaroid 55 negatives that had proven problematic in the past. I'm
> printing on both EAM and Eclipse Satine with minor tonal tweaks 
between
> the two. Now I've got tonally- smooth, extremely sharp prints. I'm
> actually having a hard time believing how good these prints look.
> Thank you and Paul for your help.
> Peter Lindman
> 
(snip)