Digital BW, The Print

Hello all,

I recently posted this message on the digital fineart list, thinking
that because I'm trying to duplicate paintings, that is where I
should've posted it, but was referred here by one of the members,
because I'm primarily dealing with monochromatic artwork.  So if
anyone here can help me, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I regularly produce unlimited small prints of my black and white
paintings. I've been using the PT Selenium Inkset on Hahnemuhle
Photo Rag on an Epson 1280. Overall, the results have been quite
good, as far as quality goes, but not as far as tone goes.

The problem I have is that while my paintings are black &
white, they aren't quite monochromatic. The black has a pretty
strong blue undertone, and the white is pretty warm, and I was using
the above mentioned ink and paper in order to more or less "shoot
for the middle" tonewise. But the results weren't quite what I
wanted. So I had considered switching to the PT Cool Neutral set to
emulate the black tone and print on warm paper to emulate the white,
but have been hesitant to get stuck with a bunch of ink that might be
too cool or not cool enough & would limit my hobby of printing B&W
photos to cool prints. And, the truth is that the cost of the PT inks
can be rather prohibitive on my budget.

So, I have been considering switching to one of the MIS inksets. In
particular I wanted an inkset that would give me the ability to
control just how warm or cool it is and also be made up of 4 shades
of gray to provide completely dot free gradations and tones.
But from what I read, the UT2 inkset essentially only has three
shades. So I was thinking of picking up some MIS refillable
cartridges for the 1280 and using all of the inks in the UT7 inkset
except for the Sepia ink, and controlling all of it with custom
profiles that I would have to create with QTR. This would essentially
give me a single black, one light black, two grays (warm & cool), and
two light grays (warm & cool), and quite the headache as far as
getting it all working right.

I think this could work, but before I dive in and drive myself crazy
with all the profiling and attempting to match the color in my
paintings, I have a few concerns that I'm wondering if anyone
could help me with or comment on:

first: the archival quality of the inkset as compared to Conetech's

second: If anyone has used the inkset, considering the UT7 inkset has
a neutral black and neutral light black, what range in the inkset is
actually toned?

third: Has anyone used QTR to control this inkset? And, if so, is it
simply a matter of creating say, a cool curve and warm curve that
can be blended to achieve the desired tone, or would there be more
to it?

fourth: If anyone has used both the PT Cool Neutral inkset and the UT7
inkset, are the cool tones comparable or in other words could I
match the tone of the Cool Neutral inks with the UT7 set? This is
one of the more important issues as I might be having some
limited editions printed for me with the Cool Neutral inkset, and
would like to be able to match the tone with my smaller prints.

last: If the Cool Neutral inkset wouldn't work for me tonewise and I
decided to go with a color process for my limited edition prints, is
it possible to get truly monochromatic toned prints from most
professional printers or would I have to really search around for one.

Any help, thoughts, comments, etc. would be very much appreciated.
And, if anyone would like to make any suggestions as to alternative
solutions, please let me know.

Thanks,

Eric