Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Roy Harrington" 
<roy@h...> wrote:
..
> I've been using an 1160 for quite a while and I just got a 7500
> (still working out some connection issues I think). 


Roy,

These are both supported by OPM 1.02 / USB / OS 9. It's just a matter of 
making profiles for your  VM inkset.

 
>I discovered gimp-print as a
> way to use old printers on OS X.

OPM should work in classic (haven't tried this version myself, but previous 
versions used to). Either way, I am sure an OS X version is coming soon. 



>Working with the 1160
> has been quite easy 


... of course, 4 inks are the easiest!


>but I haven't done much on the 7500 yet.

I found that using the double ink positions (2 magentas and 2 cyans) allowed 
me to reduce dots a bit better. Of course there are better uses for these 
positions (toners etc).


> It looks like you tested it out with a 2200 --

that just happened to be an easy profile to throw together. My real tests (i.e. for 
high end bw prints) were with the 7000 and the 1280.



> is there any help/automation in designing the shape of the
> curves i.e. partitioning inks? 

If you open any of the supplied profiles with IJC, you will be more than halfway 
there. There is no mystery once you see the curves for each ink - especially 
for someone with your experience. I think bowhaus is also supplying a 
"template" profile for guidance in the shape of each ink.


 For instance, how was the
> light black to black transition formed?

It really depends on the inkset, but a healthy dose of undercolor removal in 
the cyan position (or the light gray in the case of the 2200) helps the dmax. 
IOW as the black rises towards 100%, the other inks drop off  (but not to 
nothing) to allow for a deeper black. It's the opposite of what dyes may need 
and the opposite of how the old piezo software worked, where the black was 
supposed to have a lot of cyan under it - to avoid showing the rapid fade of 
that inkset, but at the expense of dmax.


I think as soon as you see how a profile is set up in IJC, you will have more 
answers than I can type here. And nothing is fixed in stone either, as far as 
how a profile's curves are done. 

Antonis