Digital BW, The Print

>What are the UT-VM inks? Are these MIS?

The original UT inkset was an upgrade of the old MIS VM inkset.  It used the
same densities as the old one and worked reasonably well with the older
curves for most printers.

The old MIS VM inkset actually started life as my "Variable-Piezo" inkset
for my 1160.  MIS made a hextone version of it by simply moving the toner to
the M spot from the Y position, so that it could benefit from the light ink.
Then the toner and C inks were diluted for the light positions.

This inkset, on a 1280, produced the smoothest highlights I'd ever measured
with my scanner at 1600 dpi (using the histogram standard deviation tool to
get an objective measure).

The UT inkset is still sold by MIS.

I would stay away from the old MIS VM inkset.  Those old pigs warmed up and
faded considerably more than the UT family of inks.  I wish they were off
the market. 

The UT2 inkset came out of a project that had several goals.  One was to get
better glossy printing.  As you can see from another thread here, the glossy
materials are maturing into what some of use think is the closest thing to
the air-dried silver prints we used to make.  In fact, I think they are now
visually better than the old silver prints.  However, the UT inkset did a
poor job on glossy papers.  One of the reasons was due to the inks being too
light.  They flood the surface and cause much more roughness than do denser
inks.

So, if ultimate smoothness under a loupe with matte paper is the goal, then
the UT (aka UT-1) inkset might be what you'd want.  Those light inks,
however, will exclude you from top notch glossy printing, which may be a
huge part of the future of this medium.

Note also that the UT-1 inkset curves are more difficult to tweak, it cannot
do sepia printing, and it cannot use the Glop to control the bronzing on
glossy (Premium Semimatte included) papers.

So, it's a matter of compromising the various characteristics.  At any
normal viewing distance I doubt many would be able to tell the difference
between the inksets in terms of smoothness.

Hope this helps.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com 


________________________________

-----Original Message-----
From: lambonick [mailto:BMWNick@...] 
Sent: Saturday, January 29, 2005 12:28 AM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] UT2 inks and dots in highlights



--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Roy Harrington"
<roy@h...> 
wrote:
> 
> Steve,
> 
> I'd say that what you are seeing is in the ballpark of the
differences.
> 
> I did a page of dots too:
> http://harrington.com/dotscans/dotsdots.html
> 
> My 1270 UT2 vs 1160 VM is very similar.   The bottom line is that
the VM
> ink or the new UT-VM has a much lighter light-gray.   I think most
people
> would say to the naked eye both are "good enough" but if you get
the loupe
> out you will see the difference.
> 
> Roy