Digital BW, The Print

Martin,

there may be more OPM profiles in the future, but this isn't necessarily a 
commitment on the part of Bowhaus. They may share profiles they make for 
themselves as much as I and others may share here on the list.  The only 
limitation to this free-flow is that increasingly IJC users will take advantage of 
the individual ink controls and load up their inks in a non-standard order.  That 
would make for yet another variable in the matching game. 

Development of OPM - not just profiles - seems to proceed very slowly;  bursts 
of new stuff and real progress followed by periods of complete stagnation. If 
you look at their web site, Bowhaus is primarily a company that offers 
scanning and printing services. IJC is a byproduct of their inhouse needs. In 
that sense, IJC is here to stay and has a long future, but at the same time 
development isn't likely to proceed at the pace a real software company might 
be able to sustain.  If they only figured out how to support the large format 
printers without the present limitations,  their pricing would make this the 
bargain of the decade. But  it is what it is, and when they are ready to move to 
the next revision we'll see what happens.



As for tools to help with partitioning the inks, there is indirect help within IJC, 
but no "tools" per se.  Deciding where to start an ink and how to taper it off, 
however, isn't as difficult as it sounds. A new user has plenty of existing 
profiles as guides, and the software has an amazing feature in which it can 
automatically print all active inks (jets) separately one after the other in a 
0-100% grayscale. So you get to see what each ink is doing as well as a 
composite of all these together in a separate grayscale.
 
 If you look closely at the composite grayscale, you begin to see the effects of 
bringing, say. a darker ink into the lighter values: you see the device dots that 
happen as the ink starts to kick in. By moving it further down "under" the 
heavier densities of the lighter ink, you can successfully hide those dots.  

It's actually fun to play with this because soon you will realize the benefit of 
the smaller-drop-size printers: you can get away with bringing a darker ink 
further up towards lighter values because the smaller device dots don't 
become apparent quite so easily. Thus a 2200 has a huge advantage over, 
say, a 7000 which appears clunky by comparison. Or, by the same approach, 
you get to use all 6 inks in a 7000 to hide its dots much better  than software 
that only uses 4 inks. Plus you know what each nozzle does. IP, as an 
example,  randomly picks among the pair of inks of the same density (Cyan / 
Photo Cyan, Magenta / Photo Magenta) in an effort to equalize their usage. If 
you have a bad nozzle in one of your heads, good luck tracking it down, plus 
you are waisting 2 ink positions that could be used as toners.

Another consideration in  adjusting how "soon" a darker ink comes into the 
gray scale has to do with the total load of ink that is layed down  for that part of 
the scale. Less actual fluid is needed to produce the same density with a 
darker ink than with a lighter one. Something to think about when tweaking to 
reduce bronzing in glossy papers, for example.

All this is swell and wonderful, as they say, except it won't run on your PC - so 
how about we swap one of my Macs for one of your PCs and then I get to test 
the Ergosoft RIP!...  : - )

Oh well, enough theory - let's go make some prints now....


Antonis



--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Martin Wesley" 
<mwesley250@e...> wrote:
> Antonis,
> 
> From what you say below IJC/OPM would seem to be going in the ideal
> direction. Basically it is offering the best of both worlds. It gives you
> "canned profiles" to get started with and to stay with if that satisfies the
> artist's requirements, and at the same time is open to in-depth tweaking for
> people who want or need to take things further.
> 
> The plug-in is great but not being able to open up a profile and customize
> it yourself has been frustrating. That said, getting into things at that
> level is no small task.
> 
> One of the things that really strikes me at this point is that there have
> been wildly different experiences among users with the same software and
> inks. Some people do really well with a given system and others experience
> total failure with every possible degree of success in between. After going
> through a 1270 and three 1280's I think that the problem lies in a huge
> amount of variation from printer-to-printer within a given model. This makes
> things a bit of a crap shoot. Maybe your printer handles the canned software
> well and maybe not. The ability to dial things in for your equipment sounds
> great.
> 
> I would be very curious to see a print made with the plug-in compared to a
> print made with an optimized IJC/OPM profile from the same printer.
> 
> As you very accurately point out we really don't know how much of the PS
> adjustment we ultimately do on an image is driven by the need to correct
> problems in the system. About all most of us can do is make a print,
> evaluate it, make changes in PS, make another print and keep repeating 
this
> cycle until we reach a satisfactory print.
> 
> IJC/OPM or something like it might or might not produce a better print than
> a canned approach depending upon how far off any particular printer is from
> the "ideal" printer that was used to create the canned software. If a
> printer is too far off, it is conceivable that you could not get an optimum
> print with canned software since you might have to adjust the image in PS to
> the point where data is being lost.
> 
> This then comes back to the idea that if you have a smooth running system 
in
> place that gives good prints then you may be better off making prints than
> pursuing the "perfect system". On the other hand if a you are not able to
> get a satisfying print of a significant number of your images IJC/OPM looks
> like a very good option to explore.
> 
> While the appeal is the ability to match the profile to the printer, wide
> spread use will probably depend upon the number of printers, ink sets and
> papers supported with canned profiles. Is the base of available profiles a
> growing or are things still pretty much in a development stage in this
> regard?
> 
> The one thing that still seems elusive is the creation of the separation or
> partitioning curves. The decision of where and how to bleed one ink into
> another on the tonal ramp seems to remain as much art as science. Does
> IJC/OPM have any tools to help in this regard or is it still by feel as it
> was doing CYMK separation curves for use with RIP's in the early days of
> quad printing?
> 
> Thanks for the feedback and explanations.
> 
> Martin