Digital BW, The Print

>Does anyone who has compared VM and FS inksets care to comment on the
>differences?

FS inks are Piezo software-compatible.  There are 4 shades -- a black and 3
grays.

The VM inks are not Piezo software compatible.  They use a black, 2 grays
and a cool (bluish) toner in a quad setup.  In hextone printers, there are 6
different inks -- black, 3 grays, 2 toners.

The black and cyan inks have the same densities.  The VM light gray and
toner densities are between the two lightest FS/Piezo gray densities.

>...5% has dark dots in it ...

Are you converting the file to RGB before applying the curves?  Some do see
the toner dots in quadtone printers.  Oddly, the UT inkset, which works the
same way, seems to be smoother.  Part of this is that the curves are better.
Whether this would affect the dots you're seeing in the 5% patch is
questionable.

>problem ... when
>printing on LPM paper, the Roark curves yield the greatest visual
>density at about 80% of the greyscale and then lighten and become
>muddy on up to 100%.

LPM can't take the ink load of the HW Matte setting.  Use Photo Quality Ink
Jet paper media setting.  You'll have to tweak the curves.

As long as you're going to be tweaking curves, you might as well start with
the new 1160 UT curves.  They are better, though not made for the VM inkset.
Use "No Color Adjustment" to make them cross-platform.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com