Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Howard Slavitt"
<howard.slavitt@...> wrote:
>
> topic (color) question. I'm in the process of ordering COLOR (bad
> word around here) printer profiles for my Epson R2400. I'm going to
> profile Museo Silver Rag at the "Best Photo" (2440 dpi) setting.
> Based on Clayton's suggestion for using the Museo SR for ABW, I was
> going to set my color ink density at -3% to get a bit less ink, to
> hopefully make it easier to profile and get better shadow separation.
> (In ABW mode, per Clayton's suggestion, I use a -4% color ink density
> setting, a bit more conservative than his suggested -5% setting.) I
> ran tests and could see slightly more shadow separation at -3%. Has
> anyone else tried profiling the R2400 for COLOR prints with a color
> ink density setting of something other than zero? Any
> comments/recommendations? I've searched for more information on the
> color ink density setting on the web and have found a few comments,
> but they're few and far between. My concern is that by setting the
> ink density to -3% I may be limiting the DMAX I can get, or the
> saturation, but I figure in any event a -3% setting is pretty
> conservative so it shouldn't limit the gamut too much. . .

You may be limiting your gamut a bit in the upper midtones and
highlights with that approach, but I can't really say how much. One
thing you might want to do is try the different media settings to find
out which gives you the best separation in the shadow tones. I recently
profiled Innova F-Type Gloss, which I believe is pretty similar to
Silver Rag in many ways (gamut, dmax, etc).  I found that using the
Epson Semigloss  media setting with ink density at it's default '0'
position gave very good results.  The semi-gloss media setting seemed to
do better in the shadow tones than the luster setting.