Digital BW, The Print

Don't give up.  I've been using (the same) Lyson Quad Black inks in an 
S9000 for about a year now, and get very nice results.  I do use Convert BW 
Pro, a Photoshop plugin that converts color images to black and white (but 
leaves them RGB images) with controls that replicate what we commonly do 
when exposing and printing black and white film - contrast adjustment 
filters, exposure compensation, enlarger exposure adjustment and paper 
contrast selection.  You can do all of these adjustments in PS with curves 
and layers (and I gather that that's what the plugin is actually doing for 
me,) but the plugin makes it completely intuitive, as it lets me see what 
I'm adjusting as I move the sliders.

I also do most of my printing with QImage, although prints through 
Photoshop also come out fine - just not quite as nice as with QImage and 
without an easy way to place multiple images on a single sheet, which I do 
frequently.  I print on Legion Matte and Ilford Galerie Classic Gloss and 
Classic Pearl papers.

The Lyson web site has some printer profiles for matte and gloss papers, 
and I do apply those in the printing process.  It does make a difference 
when your profile matches the paper surface.

Cheers,
Kip


At 5/11/2004 01:45 PM +0000, you wrote:

>I recently purchased some bulk Lyson Quad Black inks and empty
>cartridges for my Canon S820 printer.  There are six inks labeled
>black, dilute cyan, dilute magenta, cyan, magenta and yellow.  The
>inks are labelled "Compatible with Canon S9000, i9100".  The After
>flushing out my print head with cleaning solution I loaded the Lyson
>ink cartridges into the corresponding positions in the printer.  The
>Helix website, www.helixphoto.com (where I purchased the inks) says
>that the inks I purchased are "For
>3000/6000/6100/6500/8200/S450/S820/S450/S820/S800/
>S9000/i900D/i950/i960/i9100".
>
>Photos printed in Photoshop 7.0 with these inks are solarized and the
>tonal values are all wrong. When I print an 11 step grayscale step
>wedge the tonal gradation is not continuous - some intermediate gray
>steps are dark gray (almost black). I don't have any Lyson paper -- I
>used Ilford Printasia paper. I made a ton of test prints on this paper
>of the step wedge using the profiles from Lyson's web site for the
>Canon S800 and S9000 printers.  The grayscale patches were scrambled
>in tone on all but two settings.  These were plain paper and print
>quality 4 (worst), and transparency film and print quality 3 (the
>lowest quality available at that setting).  In both instances there
>was objectionable streaking.  I used print mode rgb and I do not check
>the "grayscale Printing" option in the printer driver.
>
><snip>I've searched for Lyson Quad Black and Canon in this group and come up
>empty.  Is anyone here using these inks on a Canon printer?  If so,
>what kind of profiles and settings are you using?  If you are using
>curve adjustments in PhotoShop, how do you do them?  I'm beginning to
>think that if these inks work at all they only work on Epson printers.
>
>Jim