Digital BW, The Print

Andy,

You wrote:

>I'm curious whether the greenish cast in tungsten that I find with some VM
>prints will be greatly reduced with the VM Sepia to Neutral.

The MIS VM inkset is rather simple -- just the MIS standard quads with a
blue (equal parts cyan pigment and magenta pigment, cut with MIS "25") added
via the toner.

The new neutral base is not so simple.  With an X-Rite spectrophotometer I
used my lightly-selenium-toned Kodak Polymax Fine Art silver prints as a
reference.

You are right that the current MIS VM has a touch of green in it.  Not that
any was added, but that is what the MIS standard quads have as their native
color.

And, the selenium toning does add a touch of magenta to silver prints.  So,
there is a coloration difference.  It is subtle, but it is there.  Some will
see it, most probably will not.

As best I can tell, the impression of green is caused by the magenta reading
being below the average of the cyan and yellow.  With the MIS VM inks, the
magenta readings with the X-Rite are slightly below that line.  With the new
neutral and with various concentrations of sepia toner added, the magenta
reading stays above that average line.

In terms of coolness, the neutral ink base is between the "nc" and "mw"
curves.  A typical midtone reading is c = 0.60, m = 0.60, y = 0.59.  Of
course, I have not seen a production sample, so ....

Tone preferences are so subjective that it's impossible to say one inkset is
better than the other.  For the real cold-tone people, I think staying with
the standard MIS VM inkset is the way to go.  This new inkset will just give
more variety, especially for the Piezo users, who will get a neutral ink
(which can be warmed up by adding some standard FS ink to the bottles), and
those who like sepia or very warm prints will be able to use the VM-sepia
toner to get tones they might prefer.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com