Digital BW, The Print

> What, exactly, are you supposed to see in Tyer's Zz's print? (if it is
> printed correctly)?
> On the monitor It looks like a single tone.
> 
> Jerry


Jerry, Below you have it in Tyler's words. Let me know if you don't still
don't understand. BTW, if all you see is one tone, either the file is
corrupted, or your monitor is all screwed up. It represents all 100 shades
of a grayscale file. To print it use Paul's curves on it just as you would
any image. It'll show you how well it separates tones that are 1% apart. I'm
told Piezo does it perfectly throughout, and Paul's Mac based vmm11-2 curves
for the 1160 do an admirable job for me, when my printer is in the mood.

In short there are 20 individual boxes, which should show separation between
each other, and inside each of those 20 boxes are Zees, which should show
separation from the box it's within.

Todd

Tyler explains:

Within each square is a gradation of 5% right to left. In other words,
the bottom right square gradates from 1% to 5%, the next square from 6%
to 10%, with enough total squares to get to 100%. The last (upper left)
square is 96% to 100%.
Within each square is a Z made up of solid value of the middle
percentage of that square. So the Z in the bottom right square is 3%,
the one in the next square 8%, etc.. It was created in the 2.2 gamma
gray space.
I made this file to evaluate my sep curves on paper. The workflow is
applied to the file, and printed.
On the print, first look for a delineation from one square to the next
for overall gradation problems. Secondly, each Z should appear against a
background square that is faintly lighter behind it on the right, and
faintly darker behind it on the left. I've found areas that need work
are fairly well revealed with this.
Dan decided it was useful for actual curve development by eye on the
monitor if you are working with RGB quad profiles, that's why he put it
with his procedure.
But I use it mostly for verification, it seems to show me specifically
where things need attention that are creating problems in images. The
other interesting thing is that often curves seem fine, then suddenly a
different sort of image looks bad, but this will show almost any problem.