Digital BW, The Print

Roy,

Thanks for the reply. 

First, I believe I can turn comma vs point probably by simply 
swapping Colorshop X back to US vs French. If not I'll do it manually.

Where I don't follow you is on the assessing the profile is 
acceptable. Yes the G2,2_Profil samples make a similar-to-kTRC 
curve : this precisely is why I suspected my whole profile(ing) was 
wrong, I was expecting a curve similar to the GMprofile one in the 
sense of being perfectly curvilinear since the L* measures feeding 
the droplet are in a linear description and there's no color. A mere 
compression in my expectations should have provided the perfect curve 
I see on the GMprofile in a kind of gamma function. 

Perceptual intent is compressing the gamut, and in our case the L* 
only, so why isn't it a kind of (curvi)linear line and not the messy 
one I got? Has it got anyting to do with the BPC handling ?


Yes G2,2 is a "dark" space, but any source space does not really 
matter as long as you keep it as source for both prints (w/ and w/o 
the profile)for the evaluating (as you said embedded profile does not 
really matter): as you can see at G2,2 the measured L* are the one I 
get when printing just the linearised stepwedge. The "proportional" 
effect (darkening of the print) thru the ICC was what I intended to 
evaluate and did prove unsastisfactory (IMHO). 

Yes, I started producing one or two prints though not yet with the 
purpose of really evaluating precisely the prints (I was just bored 
with the spectro and all the datas...). Well as expected blocked 
shadows... but I admit I did not edit at all (and even not for the 
blacks). And I'd say it matched the screen, but again this is not an 
evaluation, I did not carefully looked at the blacks and the 
highlights...

When I work color I mostly use rel/col. rendering unless I have a lot 
of out-of-gamut colors and if needed edit one or two tones so I keep 
the saturation (there's no harsh and arbiratory compression of the 
source gamut). Even for KCMY (vs grey inks) B&W I was getting 
acceptable results (albeit metamerism and dominantes with some 
papers). Wouldn't it make (any) sense to use the same for 
monochromatic B&W ? 

I must sound like winding, but I was expecting the ICC to possibly 
compress "evenly" the values and use it straight to print... I feel I 
got a CM workflow but at the detriment of the grayscale smoothness.

Anyway, you have a great soft Roy and offer a great support. If you 
grant me additional advises they will be more than welcome.

Thanks a lot.

Olivier