Digital BW, The Print

> I thought I would share my experiences.  This does take a fair 
amount 
> of time to get started, and I'd be interested in any feedback.
> 
> I am trying to set up black and white printing with MIS UT2 inks on 
an
> Epson 1280.  My first attempts, using the Roark curves in PhotoShop6
> have been troubled with ``posterization.''   I looked through the
> newsgroup, and there seem to be intermittent but persistent 
complaints
> about this, and various approaches.  To my reading, there doesn't 
> appear to be a consistent solution.  

I had this problem initially - on a 1290 with the older VM inkset.  
You might want to try Tyler Boley's curves, which you can download 
from the downloads area.

The other thing which really helps is to use a 16 bit workflow.  With 
PS6 this will be difficult as you lack many useful features.  However 
it gives you more data in the shadow areas, which helps to avoid the 
separation you get when applying a curve.  Working in 8-bit and then 
converting to 16-bit before printing won't help - you can't create 
data you don't already have.

Just something else for you to try...  Keep going - you'll get to a 
set up you're happy with in the end.  It took me about a year of 
going back to the wet darkroom, remembering all the difficulties I 
had there, and then trying something new on the computer.  I now get 
results that I'm happy with.

Chris