Digital BW, The Print

I recently printed some 21 step grayscale wedges using profiles  
generated in IJC/OPM and Roy's QTR 2.0 for comparison.  The step-wedges  
were printed on EEM using an Epson 2200 with the standard UC inks  
(matte black installed).  The profiles compared were an IJC/OPM neutral  
profile made by Antonis (re-linearized for my printer), a 50:50 blend  
of warm and cool IJC/OPM profiles, a QTR neutral profile, and a 50:50  
blend of warm and cool QTR profiles.  The density measurements from the  
step-wedges and curve plots are available in the form of an Appleworks  
6 spreadsheet.  Antonis has placed an archive containing the IJC/OPM  
and QTR profiles and the comparative spreadsheet in the group files  
section:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint/files/ 
QuadTone
%20RIP%20%28QTR%29/
All of the step-wedges printed using these profiles were very smooth  
and differed only slightly in overall tone and degree of "neutrality".   
The IJC/OPM profiles were uniformly slightly higher in density and  
within either IJC/OPM or QTR the curves for the neutral and warm:cool  
blended profiles were very similar.
If you would like a more "visual" way to evaluate the profiles take a  
look at the Photoshop swatches or i1Share cxf files that were made from  
the eye-one measurements of some of the step-wedges.  If you don't have  
i1Share, it can be downloaded for free at the url given below and it is  
available for both Mac and PC.  To view the data, just open the cxf  
file in i1Share.  Alternatively, just place the Photoshop swatch into  
the swatches folder using the following folder path for PS 7 (Adobe  
Photoshop>Presets>Color Swatches>Adobe Photoshop Only) and then load it  
to the swatches pallette in Photoshop.  Both methods will give you a  
very accurate visual representation of the step wedge and you also have  
access to the measurement data.  i1Share also has the tools to make  
very detailed analyses and comparisons of the spectral data.  You can  
download the swatches and/or cxf files from my filesharing site:
http://homepage.mac.com/scho/FileSharing2.html

http://www.i1color.com/freeware/

Carl