Digital BW, The Print

I was complaining about insufficient depth of shadow tonalities down to a good
Dmax with the two matte papers I've been testing with Septones. Well, I think
I found my tonalities and a very good deep black at the bottom (visually, not
with a sensitometer) with Epson Premium Semi Gloss. With Septone's color
sliders at high 80, mid 85, low 90, Gamma 1.00 and Dot Density 95, I got
a gorgeous, rich, slightly warm monochrome print! Specular highlights are
clean white and devoid of ink, and tonal gradation transitions are equivalent
to very good darkroom prints. Beautiful! Happy camper?  Unfortunately not yet.
The ink is extremely fragile. Barely touch it with your finger and you leave a
white fingerprint. Hot air from a hair dryer had no affect. That's not all...
Unless you hold the print just right, you get "bronzing" big time! If all the
ink
reflected equally, it would be a lot easier to accept. The much sought-after
Dmax "posterizes" (reverses to a positive) against other dark tones.

I got the same bronzing results with Epson Premium Luster which was one
of my first tests. I was going to try the Krylon semi gloss spray I had on
hand, but discovered there wasn't enough in the can. I'm in the boonies
here without easy access to art supplies, but will definitely get SOME
kind of spray covering to test, Monday. I sure hope that would solve the
problems because the quality of this print in front of me is what I've been
looking for.

_____________________________________________
Help end spam and telemarketing... never respond to it, even to "unsubscribe."


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]