Digital BW, The Print

I think perhaps you are underestimating yourself.

Less than a year and a half ago I bought my first personal laptop (vs one
provided by the office for my banking work) with no clue as to how to
maintain one (I had IT staff who ³did all that²).  I asked a friend  about
laser printers to which he replied ³wouldn¹t you want an inkjet so you can
do more with your photography hobby...²  I was amazed and to be honest
shocked at what could be done with a Mac laptop and an Epson 2100 !  (I
suspect you are way ahead of where I was a year and a half ago!)  One thing
I learnt very early on is that a calibrated workflow can save an enormous
amount of time and frustration and certainly if I were to walk into a
³digital darkroom² to gain access to a large format printer the minimum I
would expect is a colour calibrated printer, ink, media and monitor
combination.  Using colour profiles made with the Eye-One Photo was a great
improvement on the canned Epson profiles.  A colour synced workflow doesn¹t
exist to the same extent in B&W although this list is testament to the
ability to soft-proof B&W work (search the archives under ³New icc based
Soft-proof profiles for QTR²).  Using the Eye-One Photo to calibrate a
monitor and printer for colour work really is so easy.   People on this list
(Roy, Carl et al) have also devised clever ways to use this same device to
make calibrating (writing curves) for QTR easier and, as I said above, even
for soft-proofing QTR.  I would estimate that in an afternoon (ignoring
allowing time for the printed calibration charts to dry) you could have all
your colour equipment calibrated.  Calibrating QTR for your printer/ink
combination will likely take a little more time and probably some helpful
input from Roy as to some of the starting parameters but a weekend would
likely cover it.  I am about to install a CFS from MIS on my 2100 and so,
with the change of inks, will need to recalibrate my printer.  I intend to
revisit calibrating QTR for my printer because I now realise how powerful
the tool is and if I can invest some time I will have access to a world of
flexibility.

Regards

Steve


From: "chipcarterdc" <chipcarterdc@...>
Reply-To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 18:35:33 -0000
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: BW inks for 7600

Everything you say is true, of course.  My thinking is that the level of
expertise 
I should have is such that I can produce consistent results that match both
the 
client's expectations and "objective" quality standards (to the extent that
such 
is possible, of course).  I am relatively technically proficient, but not to
the 
extent of 'nuts and bolts" knowledge (e.g., I know how to use QTR with
provided curves; I don't know how to make curves myself and am not sure that
investing the time and money to do so is the best use of my time).

Without wasting bandwith by going too much into my specific idea, anything
that requires massive intervention by me won't work.  The basic idea is not
to 
run a print shop, but to provide a "digital darkroom" where people pay to
rent 
time and make prints themselves, like Pikto in Toronto
(http://www.pikto.ca/)
(well, Pikto apaprently offers both rentals and full service) or Estudio
Digital in 
Oaxaca, Mexico (no website).  Thus, for my purposes, explaining to clients
that "Oh, I just  need to create and linearize a new curve in order to get
maximum separation of tonality among the 0-5% values on a step wedge.
Come back in 4 hours " is impractical.

To follow thru on the wet darkroom analogy (maybe not a precise analogy
given the differences in digital technology, but my starting point), if I
were 
running a wet darkroom where people come in and rent enlargers, chemicals,
etc., as the proprietor, I would need to know how to align the enlarger; mix
the 
developing chemicals; explain how multigrade paper works, things like that.
I 
would not need to know how to build an enlarger, make developing
chemicals from scratch, coat my own paper, etc.

So, maybe the problem with my idea is either (a) given the nature and level
of 
complexity of digital technology, I am not the right person to pursue this
idea 
or (b) the currently available technology does not meet both my expectations
of quality and my level of technical proficiency (e.g., I could just offer
B&W 
using black-only, which certainly  accords with my skill level but not the
level 
of quality I expect (well, it actually does for some types of prints).  In
other 
words, perhaps the problem is that a turn-key solution offering the quality
I'm 
looking for does not yet exist.

I need to insert a caveat regarding "level of quality" -- the fact of the
matter is 
that  I'm thinking of the grayscale inkset route as a selling point of my
services 
-- as I mentioned in an earlier post, it just seems to me that a
less-informed 
photog interested in this technology could very well ask "You expect me to
believe that I can get the same quality B&W prints from software w. color
inks 
as I could using all gray inks?"  Regardless of whether I personally believe
it 
(and I am not wholly convinced, either), the question is whether the client
will 
believe it.  of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so to the
extent 
that I have prints hanging made w. QTR or ImagePrint that wow the clients,
that's a selling point.





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