Digital BW, The Print

Steve,

>I need to read up on Mr. Roark's products.

Let me clarify where I'm coming from.

I don't have any ink or printer products.  What I do is publish the
workflows and profiles I come up with.  MIS Associates has a business model
that is simply to sell what people want.  So, when they found people were
following up on my workflows, they started to put them on their web page as
their products.

>The little bit I found confused my newbie brain.

Some of the newer ones are not very user friendly write-ups just due to lack
of time these days.

> There seem to be so many approaches to the problem.

True, but it more or less follows the progress of printers.  It also follows
my learning curve.  So, the older inksets are not exactly what I might want
to use today.  

Lately you'll notice that I not longer am satisfied with just a single
toner.  The UT2 and UT7, while they have a sepia, in the neutral range they
are only adjustable along a straight line between carbon and the cool toner
-- close to the Lab B axis.  While this is more flexible than a monotone
inkset, when every paper has a slightly different reaction to ink, not only
along the Lab B axis (yellow-blue) but also along the A axis (red/magenta -
green), I became frustrated at the inability to accurately profile along
that axis.  Add to this variations that inevitably occur from one batch of
ink to the next, and I've decided for my perfectionist side, I need to be
able to profile both Lab A and B, not to mention "linearize" the gray ramp.

The latest approach -- what I sometimes call the 4K+cm -- is basically a K3
approach: K, LK and LLK.  But since carbon is too warm for most of what I
do, I tone the prints neutral with LC and LM. Since my old 7500 has big,
non-variable dots, I need to dilute the LC by 50% to increase smoothness.
With modern printers this is really not necessary.  

I also add a 4th K by having PK in the mix.  This ads a little between the
LK and MK, but, again, in modern printers the effect is minimal.  It's
mostly there so that I can print glossy without changing inks.

I've also added a more dilute LLK, what I call an LLLK (.3 LLK, .7 base).
This adds no visible smoothness on the 2200.  What it does is lower
lightfastness.  Not only are more dilute inks less lightfast, but also they
print warmer.  This thus causes more LC and LM to be needed.  Color pigments
are not, in general, as lightfast as the MIS carbon inks.

I also have C in my 2200.  This is marginally useful in matte printing, but
I expect it to be useful for glossy because a neutralized PK is darker than
a warm PK.  So, I'll generate a 100% black patch with a combination of PK
and C. 

In my 220 I'm going to go to a 3K+cmy, adding the yellow.  This allows not
only a sepia, but it also allows me to match the brightened paper to the mat
board.  I currently print down the too-bright paper borders with 2% carbon,
but a little yellow will do a better job.  (It can also be interesting for
slit tones.)

One reason for my current approach is also so that standard inks can be
used.  One thing we've all probably found as we move from one printer to the
next is that we have wasted inks.  I'd like to stop that.  I'd also like to
have the maximum competition from sellers.  (I'm an old antitrust law
enforcer.  So, promoting competition has been a lifestyle for years.)  So,
I'm cheap and like low prices for good products.  Competition is what gets
us that result.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com