Digital BW, The Print

Thanks for your positive comments! 

I'm afraid you're giving me some undue credit here - The print I sent in
the last exchange is not the best you can get. It appears to have very
little dots, and that's because it contains almost no bright highlights
and mostly midtones and shadows. 

If you used the same ink and printer settings I used for this image to
print a 21 step wedge you would see a mostly dotless grayscale until you
reached 10-7% and from then on you'd get a slight amount of dotting in
the brightest highlights. After I adapted Paul's 1290 curves I got rid
of even those dots, and got truly dotless prints. This is something I
discovered after sending off my July print. I'll make sure my August
print is made with one of these new curves.

As for the diluted ink I think calling it 30% Eboni is somewhat
misleading, since I'm actually referring to the physical amount of ink
in the mixture, not the density. A mix of 30% Eboni means I used one
part Eboni to two parts Epson Clear Base Stock, which gives something
like a 60-70% density. In other words very similar to the original Epson
light black ink, but with a cooler tone.

At one point I did try using the yellow potition UT ink in the light
black position, but I got some weird crossovers and unpredictable
results when I printed the stepwedge. Also, it didn't solve the problem
with dots in the higlights.

Actually the 2100 has very little problems with dots in most parts of
the curve except for the brightest highlights, so possibly a fully
partioned curve is not really needed. I'm considering to make a hybrid
curve using the values from the partitioned curve in the highlights and
more moderate adjstments for the rest. This will make it easier to
adjust the tone of the image exactly the way I want it instead of beeing
stuck with just two curves.

--
Daniel Staver
http://daniel.staver.no 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Shilesh Jani [mailto:shilesh.jani@...] 
> Sent: 31. juli 2003 04:51
> To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [Digital BW] MIS Ultratones for the 2200: questions
> 
> 
> I have seen Daniel's evolving use of the 2100 (2200) printer, and I 
> must say he has pioneered the best use of these printers for b/w.  I 
> have seen some good prints on 2200s and OEM inks with a number of 
> RIPs, but Daniel's method is the best I have seen so far.  There is 
> no metamerism because no color inks are used (well other than the 
> tonal modification of UT or VM).  He also uses diluted ink for the 
> light gray position, so there is no longer an issue with highlight 
> dots.  If I has a 2200 printer, his is the method I would choose.  
> But I am waiting for UT-FS inks before I go the 2200 way.  I 
> understand the 2200 is much faster than the 1280, hence my interest.