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Digital BW, The Print

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QuadTone RIP blending or custom curves for most "neutrality"

2004-04-15 by chipcarterdc

Just started running Roy Harrington's QuadTone RIP 2.0 (QTR) on my 9600 
and am pretty impressed thus far.  However, when looking at the curve 
choices, I noticed that you have the following tone choices:  Sepia, Cool, 
CoolSe (Selenium, I assume) and Warm.  None of these is labeled "neutral", 
and that is accurate.  I quite like the CoolSe curve, and will likely continue 
using that.  But it is not "neutral" -- it has the look of a lightly selenium toned 
print.  The "Cool" curve, as its name indicates, isn't "neutral" either -- it's got 
the look of a cool tone wet darkroom paper.

What I'm wondering is if anyone has come up with a QTR custom curve that 
produces a neutral grayscale print?  (By the way, I'm making my judgments on 
neutrality by holding the prints next to a wet darkroom print of the same image 
on Ilford Multigrade).  Or a combination of curves via the QTR blending option 
that produces neutral grayscale prints?  I'll reiterate that I quite like the CoolSe 
curve, but there are times (like in the wet darkroom) where I won't want the 
slight purplishness of a selenium toned print.  This is not at all to bash QTR, 
but ImagePrint, for example, when the Tint Picker is set to neutral, produces a 
print that is a bit cooler than the QTR CoolSe selection, yet without the coldish 
tone of QTR's Cool selection, and therefore closer to what I consider "neutral."  
I'm assuming that the same thing is possible with QTR's ability to create or 
blend curves, but if someone else has figured it out, I'd appreciate the benefit 
of your experience.

(All prints mentioned above were on Epson Enhanced Matte -- if the inherent 
tone of the paper has a significant impact on what I'm seeing (e.g., with 
Ultrasmooth, the CoolSe curve looks significantly different), please let me 
know)

By the way: regardless of whether I ultimately stick with QTR, I'll be sending 
Roy the $50 shareware fee as soon as I get a chance -- it's an amazing piece 
of work that those of us with the $ to do so should support.

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