Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Antonis" 
<antonisphoto@y...> wrote:
> Thanks. It's beginning to look like the solvent-based coats is the 
> way to go in most cases (unless someone uses solvent-based inks).
> I'd hate to have to spray that stuff though....

I've been coating my prints for probably about two years now and I 
found that water-based coating works best for me, especially on matte 
papers. I used to use an airbrush to apply thinned down Liquitex 
acrylic gloss medium & varnish but lately I found that brushing on is 
a lot easier.

An initial coat of very diluted acrylic using a roller to protect the 
fragile matte surface (this coat will dry slightly unevenly with 
little increase in dmax), and a second coat of acrylic thinned down 
just enough so brush marks will disappear. On this second coat you 
can handle roughly without worrying that some of the ink in lighter 
area might get rubbed off. The secret is in the initial coat.

I can consistently get extremely smooth and even coatings without 
much hassle. Of course I always compare mine to the standard print 
which Paul Roark had sent me a while ago (Thanks, Paul, for the 
beautiful Grand Teton print which still serves as a reference in my 
digital darkroom, and you can see how I'm still crazy about coating, 
but no more airbrush, and no smoothing rods either).

Most of the time I found these two coats are sufficient. You can 
apply an additional coat of matte acrylic or Dorland Wax Medium to 
reduce the sheen and to prevent stacked prints from sticking to each 
other.

For the Hawk Mountain Merlin whose uncoated dmax is only 1.43, the 
coatings brought it to 2.12. I calculated this dmax from the LAB 
lightness value of 6.8 for the darkest black patch. I hope I did the 
math right. The change in dmax is so great that I have to tweak the 
quadtone curves and coat the printer targets prior to creating 
profiles.

--nick