Digital BW, The Print

Tyler,
 
> Alessandro, I'm sorry no one has picked up on this thread. I guess I 
> haven't because I'm not quite sure what to say about it. 
 
That you're not sure what to say is already good news - I'd expect you or
Paul or Dan to pop up and say "Nah, I tried it - no way".
 
> I've stayed away from Photoshop's duotone modes because they don't seem to
relate 
> to anything meaningful when actually printing.  
 
Yet Jerry has succesfully used them for sepia printing.
 
> I'm pretty sure the image will be converted to RGB before printing and
your ink 
> separations will be messed up.

I'm sure, too, that the image will be turned to RGB before printing:
actually I do it myself to see if it changes somehow from the way it looks
in duotone mode - and it doesn't: more good news (what I mean is that if I
obtain the same RGB image using duotones rather than RGB curves, I should
get the same print).
The most recent weird thing that I found is that in the purge file on the
MIS site there is an image for each of the CMYK colors, yet the colors are
*not* pure C, M and Y: here follows the values in both RGB and CMYK mode:
 
"Cyan" = RGB(0,0,255) = CMYK(100%,79%,0%,0%)
"Magenta" = RGB(190,0,150) = CMYK(38%,89%,0%,0%)
"Yellow" = RGB(255,255,0) = CMYK(0%,11%,93%,0%)
 
Given that these image should be used to purge the correspondent ink, I
assume, if they're right, that if you want the Epson driver to print using
only the ink in the cyan position you actually have to feed it pure blue. As
soon as I'm back home I'll try to use these settings to see if I get an
image that's at least similar to the one produced by Brandin curves.
 
PS - It's all a bit frustrating: I can't print, because I'm out of inks, and
it makes no sense to scan, because I'm waiting for a Canon FS4000 (in
backorder - dammit!), so why bother scanning anymore with my LS-30?
 
Alessandro Pardi
 


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