Digital BW, The Print

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roy Harrington" <roy@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, June 06, 2003 6:55 PM
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] QuadToneRIP and partitioning curves


> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Martin
> Wesley" <mwesley250@e...> wrote:
> >
> > Roy,
> >
> > Being on Windows I'm afraid I haven't followed QT-RIP any
> better than
> > IJC/OPM. It too needs to be included in the discussion of
> software that
> > offers both a "canned" and detailed control approach.
> >
> > Sounds like you have the potential to do what Sundance is
> doing with the
> > Septone inks and Pixelpixasso, that is have two sets of 3 gray
> inks in the
> > printer with a single black and use software to blend say warm
> and cool
> > grays as desired. Or am I getting this wrong?
>
> Sure, you can easily use those inks.   But I would think you
> could actually make better use of 7 inks.   Like a photo and
> a matte black,  or  toners that would make it easy to split tone.
> Maybe 4 grays and c,m and y to make any tone you like.
> The thing I like is the flexibility to decide on your own
> personal scheme.

Roy,

The flexibility sounds really great. A black, 3 grays and low gamut C, M and
Y inks have been a goal that has been discussed in the past many time. The
Spetone inks are a 7 system and there might be an advantage in that they are
printing with 6 different grays that vary in hue as well as tone. It will be
interesting to see what develops.
>
> On my 7500, my plan is to use 5 grays and 1 toner so I can
> get neutral prints as good as the 1160 even though the
> 7500 has much larger dots.  The sepia prints are less
> important to me but I'll still have that capability.  You asked
> earlier whether all these new workflows could produce
> better prints -- I'm hoping yes because I can taylor the ink
> set to what the printer needs and what I consider the most
> important.

I hope we can both make it to the Bay Area meeting and that you bring
samples!
>
>
> > >
> > > After working for a while with these "raw" 16-bit curves, I
> found
> > > that
> > > partitioning at this level is very simple.  So the new and
> exciting
> > > thing is another program I'm calling QuadProfile.  With a
> couple
> > > of very straightforward calibration steps to measure the
> relative
> > > densities of the various inks, all the partitioning curves are
> > > generated automatically.  This works for any set and any
> number
> > > of inks.  The generated curves give a monotonically
> increasing
> > > density but the exact shape can be customized.  Adding toner
> to
> > > the gray is fairly easy but manual so far.
> >
> > Is this all written down some place on the net where people
> can go and check
> > it out? I know you have probably posted it but it can't hurt to put
> it out
> > there again.
>
> I'm working on that.  Descriptions of what and how seem to
> take by far the most time.

Yeah not a lot of thrill in documentation but at some point you will have to
bite the bullet at least to the extent that others get on board. Then
someone else might be able to expand upon it.
>
> > >
> > > I'm sure this will raise lots of questions so here's a few
> answers:
> > >
> > > System?
> > > This is a Mac OS X system -- Linux if you do the port.
> >
> > Being a Mac dummy, does mean you cannot do what people
> are considering with
> > OPM. Buy a cheap used Mac G3 and use it as a print server?
> How much
> > computing power do you need to run QT-RIP?
>
> Well it does have to run OS X which is a little more demanding
> but with extra memory I would think a G3 would do it.  I've
> got to get around to loading a old iBook as see for myself.

Keep us posted on this or anyone else who gives it a try on a G3. Are you
printing directly from PS or from QT-RIP as a seperate operation? The
ability to follow the cheap print server approach would make it much more
accessable. In fact if both QT-RIP and OPM worked under such a setup it
would make the extra investment more appealing.
>
> > >
(snip earlier)
> >
> > Well there seems to be a real interest in Canon printers.
>
> So far I know nothing about Canons but there are in the
> gimp code. so its within the realm.
>
(snip earlier)
> >
> > Shell scripts? Terminal program? You lost me there. How
> familar with the Mac
> > and OS X does a person need to be to work with it at this
> point?
>
> I've probably made too much of a deal about this.  It mostly
> boils down to text editting a description file and running a
> couple programs, instead of a cute graphical interface.
> For someone who has never used a Mac, its like me who
> has pretty much never used windows.

Sounds more like DOS than Windows. Typing in commands at a prompt type
stuff. The Windows users are not going to be any more experienced with that
sort of thing than the Mac users at this point. For myself having learned
Fortran on a key punch machine I could probably deal with it but would need
some kind of description of what to do.

Martin