Digital BW, The Print

Wow thanks for all the info guys (and gals)!!! I understand that my 'selective colour' method to increase the blacks is not ideal, and I do notice some loss in smoothness. 

The curves supplied (Roy Harrington's) are obviously not as good as the one's you guys are using/making, and I appreciate the help on how to make one myself.
Still though I couldn't understand any of those steps mentioned, it's beyond my skills. Thanks very much though Paul (and others) for such a detailed guide.

I've actually gone back to using the original ultrachrome inks with image-print RIP 6 in my epson 2100. For dumb-dumbs like me it's just so much easier to use a no brainer program like that with good canned profiles. I'm sure the results are not as nice as you guys, but the funny thing is when I go back and compare my mono images with the NK7 one's there is really very little differance at all! Dmax is the same (without having to do my silly "selective colour" thing), tone of the image is the same, and only one person I showed my prints to said there was slightly, and I mean slightly more separation in the NK7 images.  So for me, it's certainly not worth the trouble of importing third party inks, and loosing warranty for such little differance. And for bigger prints  than what my 2100 can do, I'm just going to go back to the darkroom. 

I would love to see how the new epson K3 system prints with image-print rip though. Compared to NK7, there must be no differance at all??!! Plus you can use the new fibre based gloss papers too.  Anybody using that system?

Anyways thanks so much again to everyone for the help.


ben ong