Digital BW, The Print

Jeff,

You wrote:

>Doesn't the Epson driver partition the grayscale in Woolf's workflow
>(instead of manually partitioning like your VM Quad RGB and Brandin's
>Original Quad RGB workflows)and Woolf's "curve" then adjusts, ahead
>of time, the Epson driver's output?  [Yes I know why not do it right
>the first time in one step, but I am curious?]

Perhaps I missed something in the workflow, but I think that it just
involves a single curve on a grayscale file.  The Epson printer, thinking
it's a color inkset, will distribute the "colors" equally so that the image
will remain gray.  So, the partitioning that the Epson driver does is
between the black and "colors" and between the light/photo and full strength
inks in the 6-ink printers.  What the Epson driver will not do is put the
lightest ink only in the highlights, etc.

The yellow-position ink in the standard MIS quads is MIS's "50%," and this
is very dark ink -- much darker than 50% of the darkness of the straight
black.  So, even in 6-ink printers there will be a very dark ink in the
highlights.

A workflow like this might well satisfy most users in the latest 6-ink
printers, but there will be more visible dots than a partitioned quad
workflow.  I used a non-partitioned workflow at first with standard MIS inks
on an 1160.  The prints were OK as large display prints, but I wouldn't be
happy with that approach for smaller prints.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com