Digital BW, The Print

Gosh Dan, you should have dropped me a 
line and exchanged some print samples those 
years ago.  The origianl MIS inkset was set 
up to work with the nefarious icefields so the 
inkset order was screwed up to begin with 
because it was  linked to the split tone - toned 
ink strategy which showed up with true 
channel separation as a bad color cast.  So I 
got Bob to make me some neutral untinted 
tones and all was well tonal/hue wise from 
then on.   He is a great guy and was very 
generous.  

On the flattening of the midtones, there was a 
crazy little loop-de-loop bump in the curves 
in the transition between the darker inks and 
lighter inks as I remember which I 
compensated for.  Hmmm, perhaps I still 
have the curve on an ancient zip somewhere 
in a box.

Then I went on to coengineer the Spectratone 
inkset and rgb driver to be happy with each 
other and also to be flexible in it's possible 
solutions and I really can't beat the tritone 
solution as a general solution.  Since I 
reverse engineered the 6 color rgb driver 
years ago, I thought to myself, hmmmm here 
is a billion dollar separation strategy for free, 
I think I'll go with it with the 
supermicroweave thrown in as a bonus :))

Allen
lincolninks.com   


solutions.   
Message: 4
   Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2001 12:02:51 -0700
   From: Dan Culbertson <
danculb@...>
Subject: Re: Spectratone Print Samples

> I actually worked out the 6 color solution a
> couple of years ago and posted it on the
> epson leben list and the digital darkroom site
> and gave it to MIS since I was beta testing
> for them at the time.   It took from then to
> now to come up with the inkset/media
> combination that is quite indestructable on
> glossy.  
> 
> Let's just say that a LOT of reverse
> engineering went into the Spectratones with
> the Epson 6 color RGB driver in mind.
snip 
> Allen
> 
> Lincolninks.com

I remember when you were doing that with 
the MIS inks.  I tried your MIS ink
order because it sounded right but the MIS 
inks just didn't quite have the
right individual tonal characteristics to work 
as-is without some peculiar
flattening in the midtones.  Couldn't even get 
that out with a CMYK setup
that let me adjust the C and M channel's dot 
area separately.  For a while I
tried to mix some clear base into the inks to 
get a proper set of ink tones
that worked with the standard cC and mM 
driver crossovers but it was just
*way* too labor intensive (and I used up *
way way* too many ink cartridges).
So your six tone inkset that is perfectly 
balanced to use three or four
tones with the standard driver crossovers is a 
huge achievement!  I'm not
sure anyone who hasn't tried to come up 
with their own ink set has any idea
how difficult that "reverse engineering" 
actually is.  For a while I had a
lot of hope for the Yarc Xtreme six channel 
RIP (which allows you to
customize the Cc and Mm crossovers in the 
driver) as an alternate software
solution to six color printers with grayscale 
inks -- but, unfortunately,
Yarc seems to have died of a severe case of 
terminal bankruptcy so we are
back to your "create just the right ink" 
solution.  But since that is the
much simpler (for the user) solution and 
takes advantage of the Epson dither
it all works out for the best!

-- Dan Culbertson
so many years, so little time...