Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Troy" <troy93955@...> wrote:
>
Hello Troy,

Printing can seem daunting, but it really isn't as bad as it's sometimes made out to be. The 
worst thing is finding the paper you like! I understand you want to print duotones. There 
are some approaches I can talk about. 

1. Use the photoshop duotone filter. For this approach you'll need to use color inks with 
an ICC profile for the paper your using. This is a simple matter of downloading the profile 
from the maker of the paper, or using one of the profiles that came with your 1280 if you 
want. Keep in mind that the more greyscale the duotone, the more tweaking you'll need to 
do to get the tone just right. Custom profiles (if you can do that) should solve that 
problem. In my experience this is the hardest to successfully print, but maybe because I 
don't have the ability to develop custom profiles.

2. Use the MIS UltraTone inks for the 1280. For more information see Paul Roarks website. 
It's very informative and Paul's photos speak for themselves (he's very good!!). With the UT 
inks you can tone from cool to warm by "dialing up" a curve Paul provides. I've used 
variable tone MIS inks using P. Roark's instructions and they work very well.

3. Use Jon Cone's Piezography Neutral K6/7 inks from InkjetMall. You can vary the tones 
from cool to warm by using different papers. Cone has just released a Sepia K6/7 inkset 
and a Sepia split-tone inkset. A selenium tone inkset and selenium split-tone inkset will 
be released in the near future according to J. Cone. I'm currently using the Cone Neutral 
K7 (for my Epson 2200) on cool paper (Hahnemule Bright White) with great results. 
Sometimes I use neutral to warm papers such as Innova Smooth Cotton and Inkpress 
Picture Rag Warm. Cone's inks cost a bit more but they don't clog!!!!!! A huge advantage. 
As my preference is for selenium tone prints I'm waiting for the selenium split-tone inkset 
to be released.


At the end of the day I would stay away from using color inks for duotone because color 
inks fade faster and fade at varying rates, thus degrading your image. So I would  say to 
try the MIS variable tone inkset first because they are less expensive than Cone's inks and 
see how it works out for you. Follow Paul's instructions and recommdations as a starting 
point and you won't go wrong. If it doesn't work out for you try Cone's inks; they work 
very well for me.

Steve Harris

> Hi all,
> I am writing today because I am totally confused about printig. I am
> going to start printing in black and white, and after all the reading
> i did on the web i am even more confused about what I need to do to
> get good quality prints. This is something I would like to get serious
> about but it seems like all the joy is being drained out of it when i
> start to try to educate my self about printing.
> I am using a Epson 1280. I use photo shop to edit my images. I am
> thinking about starting to use duotone instead of grey scale
> conversions. My question's are.
> 1. do I need to have a printer icc profile for my printer?
> 2. what is the easyest way to get quality prints?
> 3. I allready have a spyder monitor calibrator is there any thing else
> that i need?
> 4. I am just plain fed up and confused with reading and trying to
> understand all of this on my own, can some one please guide me.
> Thank you very much in advanced for your help. Troy
>