Digital BW, The Print

I agree that a gray space the same gamma or dot gain as the output
system does indeed work well, and beyond that just a custom gray space
used as a preview. Both will cut down on test prints considerably.
I do find the icc profiles made specifically for soft proofing are
helping me a lot. It's not so much the ink tint and paper base hue,
that's nice I suppose but not essential by any means. I find some very
critically chosen separations, particularly near 100%, more accurately
predicted with the icc soft proof profiles, particularly with ink
black checked.
Takes a while to get used to the look of it, but ink on paper always
looks so different than the monitor that I need all the help I can get.
Those with EyeOne Photo may want to give it a try, it's very easy to
do. If custom dot gain in PS had some more curve points, or allowed a
simulated dmax like profiles do, it would surely help.
Tyler

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Antonis"
<antonisphoto@y...> wrote:
> Sam,
> 
> I find that on a calibrated monitor set up with a 1.8 gamma in the
> Photoshop prefs for grayscale, I get a very close match to what
> OPM prints (using the 1.8 default on OPM and setting the linearization
> to -6 for the profile).
> True, the shadows may look a tiny bit more open in the print, but I
> never had a problem anticipating that.
> The other thing that may throw you is that "monitor black" and
> "print black" can be very different and no gamma or gain curve can
> fix the 100% point of the display. For this reason I prefer to work
> on a Sony Artisan that gives you complete manual control
>  over the contrast of the display.
> 
> The issue of color and paper preview, as has been noted here, can
> be solved by making soft proof profiles to use in Photoshop. Those
> can be made for any print driver, not just the ones we are
discussing here.
>  I am sure opinions will differ - but I find that once the grayscale
itself is
> accurately displayed, I would rather see a hard copy proof and judge
> the effect of ink color or paper density on a real print. Even with
> color work on the best monitor, nothing beats how our eyes (i.e. brains)
> respond to reflective copy when it comes to that final tweak.
> 
> Antonis
> 
> 
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Sam McCandless 
> <samcc@v...> wrote:
> 
> .......
> 
> > And speaking of softproofing, I assume QTR and IJC require an equally 
> > good monitor/display and adjustment of it? But again I wonder which 
> > options are now thought good enough to exploit the software to best 
> > effect.