Digital BW, The Print

First of all, before I go off on another tangent, it's important to
acknowledge the work of Roy and Carl to implement these techniques and
share them. I remember some email conversations between all of us but
don't recall whether it was Roy or Carl who first discovered how to
hack custom charts into EyeOne Photo, it was just a naming convention
and not something more complicated. I hope Gretag never "fixes" this...
I also want to make clear that I'm not implying their work was not a
creative breakthrough, they may well have implemented it with no
knowledge of previous work by others, it becomes obscure. Certainly
Roy's single channel output profiles are new.

The tangent- This stuff is not new. Many of us have been soft proofing
for all kinds of odd inksets and workflows for some time. Dan
Culbertson refers to it in another context in a pdf somewhere on this
site dated 2001. I profiled and used soft proofing methods to help
generate curves for a variable tone MIS inkset for Martin, also
somewhere on this site, back in 2002. I also used these methods for my
own workflow for quad work in CMYK with a RIP. Back then we used
Profiler Pro because it would not choke on such unexpected "colors".

One problem in this fast paced digital world is that people come and
go, new products are quickly introduced, and the knowledge base seems
to come and go as well. A breakthrough occurs, and then disappears,
then you have new people coming in with no access to it. How many
times to we see the "what is QTR?" post. Thankfully it is alive and well.

The concept of softproofing any of these workflows, virtually any of
these ink sets, has been around a long time. I still stress learning
color management, no matter how you wind up using it. The above
methods become very obvious to someone with strong working CM knowledge.
These ongoing problems persist unnecessarily, in my opinion one reason
is because the reluctance to learn color management also persists.
I know it's a drag, but the zone system was too until it became second
nature.
Tyler, ranting...