Digital BW, The Print

Tom.....
  
>I am curious why there is little/no interest in building new 
profiles from scratch.  Time, quality?

You can definitely build great profiles from scratch, and I have done 
a few.  The quality of the final profile will depend on the skill and 
knowledge of the person building it.  I actualy learned a lot by 
doing this, so it has been of value to me.  The only real limitation 
is time and the willingness to experiement.  There are limitless 
combinations to come up with a neutral, linearized profile, 
especially when using a multi-ink printer, such as the 2200 with 7 UC 
inks to select from.  If you want a 50% gray, for example, you can 
blend all sorts of different combinations to get there.  

The fewer inks you use for a given profile, the fewer possible 
combinations you have.  Building a Warm profile from K and LK inks 
only is pretty simple, since you only have two inks to mix, which are 
both very warm in nature.  You may or may not get getter dithering 
and dot patterns by introducing more inks, but that is where skill 
and experience come into play.  

By using a good, existing profile that is already "neutral", you have 
a starting point for curve shapes and ink combinations, and a lot of 
the 'heavy lifting' has already been done.  Then, if you want more or 
fewer inks, or slightly different toning, you can make more modest 
adjustments and see how they affect the final result.  

I spent quite a bit of time coming up with a good neutral profile for 
EEM.  I played with different combinations to get the toning I 
wanted, good spacing, good curve shapes, ink limits, etc.  I settled 
on using LK, LC and LM in the highlights and midtones, and C, M, and 
K in the dark midtones and shadows.  I left yellow out of the mix to 
avoid/reduce metamerism.  Is it the best attainable profile?  I doubt 
it, but I am pretty happy with it.  The neutrals are pretty 
consistent throughout the tonal range and it is very linear.  Maybe 
the dithering and dot patterns can be improved by changing 
something.  Someone else could probably take this profile and find an 
even better combination that is marginally better (I hope they do and 
are willing to share it).  As long as I have a good profile as a 
starting point (a somewhat subjective call) I can repurpose it for 
different papers and/or printers that use the same inkset.  

Once I got my initial EEM neutral profile where I wanted it, building 
a family of cool, selenium, warm and sepia profiles was pretty quick 
and painless.  And moving to a new paper was also easy.  All I had to 
do was possibly change the Black ink limit, make minor adjustments 
for color casts, and relinearize.  All done. 

If you have the time and inclination, building a few profiles from 
scratch is a good learning process and can add to your knowledge 
base.  To save a lot of time, just start with a good profile and edit 
it to cut time substantially.  

Lou