Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., Todd Flashner <tflash@e...> wrote:
> on 8/11/01 12:53 AM, mwesley250@e... wrote:

> You could put a Curves adjustment layer below your Channel Mixer adj. 
layer.

--- You are right: The Mixer should always be at the top.

> Antonis, I'm also curious about your custom grayscale curve for display
> purposes. This is a custom dot gain setting you create in Color Settings?
> And do you set this as your grayscale working space, or apply it as a
> profile to your image? Is this in addition to monitor calibration, or in
> lieu of it. If your monitor is calibrated, shouldn't your print profiles be
> putting your prints in the ball park?

---Todd, monitor calib is separate from all this: This is a profile that tells PS 
what RGB values to give the monitor for whatever it is displaying, be it RGB, 
gray or CMYK. 
What the Custom Dot Gain curve (PS 6) does is tell photoshop to display gray 
values according to how they will print. So, you can put up an image and a 
print made from it and fiddle with the  custom gray curve (in color settings) 
until the two match. Then you save that and name it for the printing system you 
calibrated to. You can save as many as you have ink/paper combos. Next time 
you have a grayscale file you load the custom dot gain curve for the ink/paper 
you intend to print on. It will tell you exactly how it looks before you print.

When you use a printing profile in Piezo, that profile does a set of tonal 
adjustments internally to compensate for the paper. It "linearizes" the process 
so to speak, so that 15% gray will be 15% across all sorts of papers (one 
profile to each paper). 
In practice, as you know we mix and match profiles and papers. So, whatever 
the profile does, that's great, but we only really care about the final print. After 
a print is made, on the specific paper, profile, ink, printer etc, then we make 
that Custom Dot Gain that accounts for the whole lot and gives us a perfect 
preview. At least that's one way of working.

Antonis