Digital BW, The Print

I have been using QTR for a couple of months now and I am thoroughly 
impressed with most all its attributes.  I am running it on my 7600UC and on 
my 'experimental' 1280 with the UT-2 CIS inkset.  I am on a PC, XP Home 
Edition operating system.  Certainly Roy Harrington and Stephen Billard 
deserve great credit for their excellent work ... so too this forum, where 
one can always count on 'active' response.

I do however have a few concerns.  As I understand the history of QTR, Roy 
first developed it for Mac and then Stephen added the QTR-gui which along 
with some updates from Roy made the product useable on PC.  However, while 
there have been several suggestions regarding the imminent arrival of a new 
PC version which would incorporate 'profiling capability' for the PC 
platform, nothing has transpired yet.  Roy has also posted some new lab 
color space profiles which as I understand it (?) are intended to help with 
soft proofing (but is this the case for both Mac and PC?).  In any event, I 
have not been able to figure out how to do soft proofing on my PC operating 
system.

With the above as background, I examined the images I was printing with QTR 
and noted that they most always printed quite a bit darker than displayed on 
my Artisan monitor.  In addition, the shadow values are tight and lack 
separation. I started to look at the 21-step wedges I was printing along 
with my images.  Using my i1 spectro to measure, I discovered that the step 
wedges, while absent any color cast were not linear, and they do (not 
surprisingly) show lack of separation in the shadows.  For example, printing 
with MK on the 7600UC upon Ultrasmooth (using the EEM, neutral profile) gave 
the following luminance results: 100%(black)-19, 90%-23, 80%-27, 70%-32, 
60%-37, 50%-42, 40%-49, 30%-58, 20%-70, 10%-82, 0%-98.  I can use these 
values to construct a 'curves adjustment layer' to 'soft proof' my images, 
and was able to develop another 'curves adjustment layer' that delivered 
better separation in the shadows.  (The 'optimized' curves produces the 
following results: 100%(black)-20, 90%-26, 80%-32, 70%-39 60%-49, 50%-59, 
40%-68, 30%-75, 20%-83, 10%-92, 0%-98).

I would very much like some feedback on what the many more experienced users 
are finding along these lines.  Are my results valid?  Am I right to be 
looking for more linearity than I see in my step wedges? Is there a 
procedure to use Roy's lab color space for soft proofing on a PC?  Does 
anyone (especially Roy, Stephen or Lou) have thoughts as to when profiling 
capability will be added for PC users?

I appreciate this forum and its wisdom immensely, and it is surely wonderful 
to see the improvements in B&W printing that have come about as a result of 
its collective contributions.

Fred Drury,
Markland Imaging