Digital BW, The Print

I think that after a week of testing I have found Nirvana (or maybe 
Near Nirvana, time will tell).  As background my wet darkroom 
printing was 99% glossy paper which was air dried and my develper of 
choice was and still is Harvey's 777.  This paper has gotten me 
closer to the "look:" than any I have tried.

According to Harman's info, the coating base is Baryta, the same as 
used for the base of high quality silver emulsion paper.  The 
increase in sharpness and depth of the blacks when compared to other 
matt papers is amazing.  NOTE: this is not an ILFORD injet product. 
The Ilford injet paper business was acquired by another company from 
Ciba-Geigy.  The Harmon injet paper shows the Ilford technology in 
silver based papers.

For the record,  my work flow:

Computer: Custom Duo Core 1.8ghz PC, AOpen mb with Intel chips, WinXP 
Pro.

Scan: color neg or B&W film with Nikon Coolscan 4000 (with Nikonscan 
or Vuescan, whichever is better on the given day)

Edit: Lightroom v1.0 for initial conversion and edits. Final levels 
set in Lightzone v2.1 and then back to LR for final printing.

Printing: Epson 2200 - a) for black only straight to the printer from 
LR (UC inks) or b) export image for printing with Quadtone RIP.

For me the key to this flow is the use of LZ from within LR to set my 
black and white levels; the plus is that LZ lets me work on regions 
as well as the overall image.

Finally, the LR/LZ edit interface seem to work well.  It appears that 
if I open the LZ edit image from the LR file I can still access the 
LZ levels etc and save the image back to the LR file with the changes 
reflected in LR.  I would appreciate someone else confirming this is 
in fact happening.

Comments from anyone who has tested this paper would be most welcome 
and of interest to other members of the forum!

David Dorn