Digital BW, The Print

Hi Mitch,

I decided to go digital with my B&W exhibition work
way back in 2001.  Since then, I have tried almost
every software/ink solution out there, ranging from
IRIS/Omnitone ink printing, several generations of
Cone products, various RIP and profiling solutions for
Ultrachrome inks, Media Street G-Quad inks, Lyson's
Daylight Darkroom and more.

Of all these solutions, what I like the best, so far,
is the Cone K7 inkset (K6 for your 7000 printer)with
the Studio Print 12 RIP program.  Although it is a bit
pricy, the Studio Print RIP will ultimately make your
life alot easier and save wasted ink and paper.  Used
in conjunction with a spectrometer such as the Gretag
Eye One Photo, Studio Print is brilliantly simple and
elegant to operate.  It allows you to set your inks up
almost anyway you like and then create an absolutely
perfect grayscale by linearizing and ink limiting your
paper of choice.  It is incredibly easy to do and the
results are spectacular.  It is the closest thing to a
digital Zone System I have seen.

Studio Print also makes it lots easier to set up jobs,
drag and drop multiple print layouts, and resize
images on the fly.  In addition, you create "print
environments" which save all of your printer and ink
settings, as well as your B&W linearizations or color
profiles.  You simply create different print
environments for different papers, printers, etc. that
you use and then just toggle between them from a
pull-down menu.

The only drawback is that Studio print is a Windows
only program.  However, it runs fine on Macs using a
Windows emulator such as Parallels Desktop.  Studio
Print does not use much memory or processor power, so
running it on a WIN emulator is no problem.

Currently, Cone offers a so-called "neutral" K6/K7 ink
set and a Sepia set.  Everyone is waiting for a new
Selenium set in the pipeline that will work on both
glossy or matte papers.  To my eye, selenium is much
closer to neutral (a highly subjective concept).  I am
using the Sepia K7 set and I love it.  It is somewhat
less warm and less yellow than the previous Cone
Carbon Sepia ink set.  The difference between my new
prints with K7 and my old K4 prints is surprising; I
am seeing tonal passages I never knew were there.

Good luck!
BBM


 
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