Digital BW, The Print

Hi Steve,

I'm not sure I can give you much theory behind it all.   I mostly go by whatever
looks and works the best.  I've always been surprised by how poor a simple
21step looks on a well profiled monitor.   On the other hand the softproofed
21step has much nicer separation everywhere and matches the print too.
On the Piezo website the rollovers that show their softproofing exhibit the
same dramatic tonal difference.  I don't know why but softproofing is so good
as far as I'm concerned that I just use it all the time.

I would think "simulate paper white" would be correct, too.  But again by trying
both it just doesn't look as good.  With EEM the highlights look way to blue.
So I leave paper white and ink black off.

Roy

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Steve Kale" 
<stevekale@b...> wrote:
> Hi Roy
> 
> I have just finished (finally) calculating and loading some softproofs for Permajet 
Alpha.  
> The softproofing capability is great.  Thanks to you and to Carl!  One question 
comes to 
> mind again though and it has to do with the way QTR prints a lot lighter than the 
image on 
> screen.  The softproofing feature highlights this dramatically.  I find I have to punch 
the 
> blacks to get close to a match (duplicating the image on screen with one 
softproofed and 
> the other not).  Thinking out loud, given the two end points are fixed, ie paper 
white and 
> 100% black, this begs the question as to whether something is out of whack in the 
original 
> curve linearisation process.  Either that or QTR/Gimp maps pixels with a bias away 
from 
> 100%.  In general, I would expect the softproof to only show me (a) the hue of the 
output 
> paper and ink combo and (b) the lower dmax (assuming out-of-gamut is not an 
issue).  A 
> curve adjustment can't alter (b) cos 100% black is as black as can be. What am I 
missing?
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Steve
> 
> PS:  Do you check simulate paper white in the softproof? (I have not but many in the 
colour 
> world argue you should)