Digital BW, The Print

I'm still very new to both BW printing and the MIS VM inks, but I 
thought I'd share what I found this morning when printing a photo 
restoration image on various papers in WIN98SE on a 1280 printer.

I've never used EAM, so I probably steepened my learning curve 
somewhat, but I'm making some progress. I don't know enough to give 
much more than a general observation, but maybe that'll be helpful.

I'm printing a 1904 8x10 image that I scanned from a very good grade 
of newsprint (vintage 1976), so print quality expectations were never 
very high. However, I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the 
prints. 

I printed the image on Museo (250gsm), Epson SFA (425gsm), and 
Brightcube Eclipse Satine 190 papers. I used the VMP8-MW8.acv curve 
for all three prints and viewed them under an Ott-lite.

My least favorite of the three was the Eclipse Satine. Although I 
like the paper (in part because it's quite a bit whiter than the 
others), the blacks didn't look as deep as on the other two. Could 
this be because of the combination of this warm curve and this bright 
white paper? This paper did seem to show just a little more detail, 
however. 

The Museo paper I think is just a little whiter than the Epson SFA, 
but they're very close. The Museo image is a little sharper than the 
SFA image, but not by much at all and the sky is less mottled (better 
looking) in the Museo print.

Overall, the Museo print is the best of the three in this instance.
I like all three papers and will continue to experiment with all 
three. I've got plenty of Museo and Epson SFA to experiment with and 
will order the Eclipse Satine when they get it stocked again. 

I hope this is helpful...

Tom Keesling
Intelligent Design, Inc.