Digital BW, The Print

Howard,


> Am I right in thinking the Cyan ink is in the Yellow position?

Yes.

>Perhaps using the Photo Black as one of the gray inks has 
>made things more complicated than they would be by going 
> straight to the LK.

With IJC I'd agree.  However, with QTR's rather automatic method of doing
the carbon core cross-overs, it's working fine.  One of the main reasons the
PK is there is to be able to print on glossy paper without changing any
inks.  While in a 2200 it's not big deal, this is a test bed for the 7600 -
9600 also.  There is it a big deal.

> Does the extra ink in this position make a significant difference 
> in the shadow area?

It adds just a bit more smoothness -- barely noticeable.  Frankly, once one
has a 3k system, the quality differences above that are more academic than
real.  In the 220 and 1280 I'll probably have just 3k's (to facilitate the
Epson driver approaches), and I expect them to make prints that can hang
next to the best.

> It could be that the PK has caused the tonal variation you 
> have had to fix with the Cyan ink.

No, the slight warming is the Eboni coming in.  It's so dense it can
overwhelm any of the colors.  Even full cyan can only offset Eboni up to
about density 1.5.  After that there will be a slight rise in warmth until
the Eboni starts to get cooler as it approaches its dmax.  

I could have put more of the light colors in the mix, but I wanted to roll
that curve off gently to avoid the smoothing algorithm from going berserk
and sticking artifacts elsewhere in the curve.  (The QTR curve preview is
not, from what I can tell, an accurate view of what is actually happening.
It seems to lack the smoothing algorithms that are, no doubt, in the actual
ink distribution algorithms.  It's also got a bug in it that allows it to
work only on the first of these table-derived curves.)  At any rate, since I
had the cyan in the printer, I used it rather than lots of LLC and LM.  The
image is so dark down there that the rather minor tone variations are not
really very significant.

Actually, the PK is more neutral than the lighter grays.  As such, it
required less color, thus increasing the lightfastness in that area.  This
is consistent with what I found with the LLLK also.  The lighter the carbon,
the more color inks are needed.  The most lightfast inkset is the BO
version, but I like smoothness and tone control.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com