Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., daschkenas@a... 
wrote:
you say you get good b&w with the mis color ink, 
> adding 8M and-5C, on the sliders.
> Is that all you do?

You have chosen the toughest avenue: to print neutral B/W with 
color inks. You can play around with those sliders for a while, but 
my bet is that it won't take long before you see their limits.

The best way to start, (emphasis on "start"), is to pick ONE 
paper, and ONE set of inks, and get a custom ColorSync profile 
made. And also to get some basic monitor-profiling 
software&hardware. Even then, you're not over the hill, but you're 
at least in the batter's box.

Companies like ProfileCity make have a license to make custom 
profiles for customers.
http://www.profilecity.com/

For monitors, I use OptiCal software and a DTP92, but there are 
others.
http://www.colorcal.com/

Short of doing all this basic stuff, you just end up trying to shoot
a 
moving target. It gets old pretty quickly...

I recently have been doing this thing, where I take one image, 
and then "tone" it in different ways in Photoshop. I save out each 
of of those methods, either using Levels, or Curves, or Colorize, 
etc. so that you can reload them later. I label the toning method 
on each print, and then keep them by the printer for reference. 
This way, you can see the EXACT look of that method, even 
though it's printed through a profile. It also makes it easier to do 
whole batches of images with the same look; just convert to 
RGB, load the Curve or Levels, and print.

-Mark