Digital BW, The Print

Peter,

>My comments, were more for Paul's sake, in that if people can't make
>contact, it may be of concern, to him. ...

It is a concern of mine, and I appreciate the information being conveyed.  I
hope the situation gets better soon.

>Paul,
>have only recently set up an 1160, using MIS VM inks, using your
>curves. Very pleased with the results.

Good.  When the timing is convenient, you might consider trying the Ultra
Tone upgrade.  It is more stable, and a more neutral print can easily be
made from it either with the standard vm curves or new ones I've written.

(I had the original vm inkset & "nc" curves print about 0.04 units cool.
This was to partially offset expected 0.08 units of warming, which was
mostly from light exposure and the fading of the small amount of dyes that
were in the carbon black from which the gray inks were made.  Carbon also
warms, but much less, and from a yellow channel density increase, not a
fading process like a dye.)

>QUESTION: I find on some images, I get a better result without the
>curves. Is it normal, to have this, or am I not preparing the image
>correctly?

Perhaps both.  The vm inks make a decent print with no curves, but they are
not as "linear" (compared to the standard vm ramp).  I have written curves
for several hextone printers that are designed to print from the grayscale
file in that mode.   With the 1160 I didn't make a grayscale printing curve
only because the 1160's cyan (dark) ink would be printed in the highlights,
and some would object to the dots.

One thing you might want to do, if you haven't already, is to calibrate your
monitor for viewing B&W grayscale files.  I'm sure there are a number of
ways to do this.  I just do it visually in PS6 with a preview procedure
outlined by Tyler on the Piezo forum last year (2-3-02).

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com