Digital BW, The Print

Daren,

You wrote:

>Just out of curiosity I tried running a couple prints using [the] Neutral
>Cool VM curve on my MIS FS printer, and the results were surprising
>good.  Perhaps it is just a fluke, but it seems to produce nice
>definition in the highlights and shadows (the shadows, of course, being
>the problem areas in the Woolf workflow).  My reasoning behind doing
>this was, when using the VM inkset and the NC curve we get good and
>relatively equal distribution (partitioning) of the inks into the
>appropriate tonal areas, then shouldn't it work for the FS inkset?
>Perhaps you have some more insight into this....

The MIS VM inks and the FS inks are very similar in the densities of all the
inks except the toner, which is the lightest gray position in the FS inkset.
In the hextone printers the ink positions are entirely different.  However,
in the quad printers the ink positions are the same. The MIS FS densities,
on my scanner, are about 100%, 82%, 38%, and 27%; the MIS VM densities are
about 100%, 83%, 38%, and 42% (toner).

So, if the FS inks are printed with the VM curves, the highlights may be a
little light with the cool curves because the curves were written for the
denser toner.  The best highlights would be with the warm curve, because
this gets the highlight density entirely from the magenta-position in, which
is the same density in both inksets.  (They are not the same inks.)

The VM Sepia-Neutral that I'm printing now will have neutral midtones that
will make a neutral FS inkset.  Once the variable-tone inkset is done, the
corresponding FS inkset is also essentially done.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com