Digital BW, The Print

Paul Roark wrote:
>> ... 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 it is a big deal.
> ...


Howard Shaw wrote:

>I understand why you would want to have PK in the printer but not so 
>much why you would want to use it in curves for matt paper when it's 
>density is so close to the LK.

Actually, standard PK has 3 times the carbon of LK.  That's the standard
dark to light ratio.  The K4 PK, however is a bit less dense.  The Eboni has
more carbon than the PK, of course, but I'm not real sure how much more.
It's closer to the PK than LK, I believe.

The PK in the mix does lead to a smoother transition to the Eboni.  If the
PK was not easily available or not easily inserted via the QTR routine, I
would not worry about it.  But, since it's there anyway, I figure I might as
well use it.

> ... I presume you would not have any concerns about any 
>interaction between Eboni & PK in the same print.

No, the base of the PK and LK are the same.

>> ... (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.) 
 
>Yes, I hadn't noticed that before as I more often use .acv curves.

I started by using acv curves, but was finding that having the curves
external to the QTR profile was going to cause confusion.  For both me and
others that might use my profiles, having all the information easily
accessible from the QTR file seems rather important.  So, while I prefer a
graphical interface, I hope that I have found a rather limited number of
points in the table that gives a smooth tone ramp -- for more than just this
one profile if I'm lucky.  If that is the case, it might make it a whole lot
easier for me and others to modify the QTR profile by just altering a few
numbers in a table and without having to search for the curve that was
embedded.

Or am I missing something?  Is there an easy way to use an acv curve and
later extract it from the QTR profile?  If that could be done, I'd probably
go back to the curves.

> The second preview point curve seems to show points from the 
> first and second curves.

Yes, something like that is going on.  I have not found any way to clear the
"memory" in that subroutine aside from shutting QTR down and re-opening it.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com