Digital BW, The Print

Paul,
 
> But again, if your aim is a good looking 21-step test strip from your
> workflow, why do you need the ink densities?  Just use trial and error.
 
In an ideal world, knowing the density of each ink on the paper would allow
me to write a WYSIWYG Photoshop duotone set, using 4 grays with that same
densities (i.e. percentage). Reading your words (and your other post about
when the black ink kicks in in the Epson driver), however, made me realize
that this can be a good starting point, but I have to do some trial&error
sessions anyway, given that:
1) I'll never know *exactly* what the Epson driver does.
2) Mixing inks on paper may well yield different results than what Photoshop
does when it combines them in duotone mode. It is true that PS (ah, what a
great piece of software!) allows you to specify overprints, just for this
reason, but this needs printing all combinations of the 4 inks, scanning
etc., and it sounds more or less an amount of work comparable to the
aforementioned trial&error.
Anyway, shouldn't I get a perfect 21-step strip, but only a pretty good one,
WYSIWYGness would still be reachable: I'd simply write a duotone set
matching that strip. For example, one with 39% gray rather than 40% and 56%
rather than 55%. 1 percent differences are surely visible (at least on
screen), but I don't think they would be a limit in what you can reach.
 
 
> Your English is great.
 
Thank you for your kind words. My English may be good, but I'm just a
block-head, a tapioca-brain, you name it. I opened the long expected package
from MIS, last night, only to find out that I forgot to order the virgin
carts. Luckily there was nobody around to hear my swearing (in Italian) when
I double-checked their site and saw that it wasn't their mistake, but mine.
Two more weeks of waiting, sigh...
 
Alessandro
 


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