Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "m_gatehouse" 
<m_gatehouse@y...> wrote:
> 
> I've never found photo rag to be the best for DMax
> 
> Using Epson inks on a 4800
>

Third party black inks like Eboni or Image Specialists give a better 
dmax on some paper, worse on others. The 1.66 is what I can remember, 
I'll have to look at my notes or the profiles when I get a chance to 
measure the targets. I might have had more like 1.68 or 1.69 but I 
rememeber that there was some non-linearity with ink loads that high, 
and I think I cut it back to 1.66 for consistancy. Museo Max has a nice 
over ink "roll off" as it gradualy goes to around a dmax of around 1.5x 
(high 1.5x). The black ink did not show any signs of pooling when I 
pushed the ink up to the real 100% (normal amounts are around 50%-60%), 
again 100% is up where you need to be for uncoated textiles. (and yes I 
use a RIP, so I have control over theamount of ink).

And yes John, I think it is pretty close to the dmax of the Innova 
papers, but I hadn't measured those yet so I didn't add that in. Not to 
get off subject, but I found that I could push Hahnemuhle PR Satin to a 
dmax of 1.74. But to do that I had to use an ink load that would be far 
to heavy for anything but textiles, or more than 200% normal ink (100% 
real output).

And if anyone is wondering why I might be lining up all these different 
papers right now, it's because I decided that I needed to organise all 
the papers I've tested into a book, and all of them needed to be 
printed with the same inks, previous testing was across three different 
ink sets (Generations [never again], Mis GP Archival with Eboni [good 
but there is better], and Image Specialists Ultra Pro [current]). I 
also wanted a catalog of textures, gamuts, and one single (color) test 
image.