Digital BW, The Print

Hello Cynthia,

>I've been to the site and reviewed the materials.  But unless if I 
>missed something, he suggests using Velvet Fine Art as the media 
>type for all matte papers??  I tried that on the first print I did 
>on Enhanced matte; set the media type to VFA then, ink density to -
>5% and tone to light, but it came out terrible; very dark in the 
>shadows.  So then I went with the Epson defaults with media set to 
>enhanced matte, the ink to -5% and it came out much better.  Then 
>tried same image with tone set to light, normal and dark and decied 
>that at least for Enhanced matte, that the prints looked better when 
>set to dark.

This is probably my fault for not explaining some things better.  All
of the driver settings are relative to something else.  There are many
possible combinations of settings that will work, but whatever
settings are used for output are dependent to some degree on the
settings that were used to prepare the image. 

In the opening paragraphs the article mentions that the workflow is an
extension of a previously developed one and contains links to previous
articles.  What is not well explained is that the suggested settings
are predicated on an image being worked up using the approach
described in the earlier articles (image profile, printer gamma
setting, etc).  It's quite possible that if an image was worked up
using a different technique then different output settings might be
required.  The material in article #9 is just one side of a two-sided
coin, so to speak.  

In my mind the articles on that page are part of a series, one
building upon another.  But I think I should add something that
explains this better.  Back to your situation, the concepts in the
article will work but you will have to do some experiments and see
what actual settings work best for you.  Those suggested settings
aren't meant to be carved in stone, but are just to help people get
started.  

 
>Tried using some of Clayton's color wheel corrections, but they 
>didn't always seem to work so well.  Depending on the papers, there 
>is often a slight color cast which you are supposed to use the color 
>wheel to counteract?  So I thought if others found other settings 
>that work for them, it would be helpful if they could post them.

A similar situation here.  The effect of the ABW settings can vary
slightly with density (ABW isn't a perfect system).  If your images
have been worked up with a different technique then it's quite likely
that the ABW settings will also differ.  Again, the bottom line is we
must do some experimenting to find what works best for us.  There are
lots and lots of variables.  It's rare that any two people will do
things exactly the same way.  I hope this is of some help.

Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm