Digital BW, The Print

Josh,

You are exactly right. Most of what I do if from drum scans that were
originally saved as grey scale 16 bit files, though I am beginning to
work more and more with digital camera files, just not much in
monochrome yet. I need to think through this more too.

The native gg space for a Mac is usually set at gg 1.8. When I first
started using QTR, in Roy's documentation he suggested using GG 2.2 as
the print space because his curves were optimized for that space.
Since I've had excellent results with HIS PREMADE CURVES on my machine
I still have not linearized that machine with an Eye One, which may
improve things a little, though I'm not sure exactly how much if any.
I don't really have any complaints about the tonal ramp transitions,
metamerism issues, etc. but there is always room for improvement. Now
the older printers vary a lot more from machine to machine. 

The issue of converting an rgb file to a greyscale file is open to
many interpretations and possibilities. Different files, cameras, etc
perform differently as do different qualities of subjects dealt with.

Bottom line is, if you do have an Eye One or similar device you are
better off using it now with QTR because it has a lot of features that
allow for partitioning of ink density these days. And, that brings it
more in line with what Studio Print has been capable of doing all this
time.

John