Digital BW, The Print

Hi all,

I've been using the Ultrachrome K3 ink set with my r2400 for some time 
now, but I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the difficulty of 
getting my black and white prints to avoid having unpleasant colour 
casts. I suspect, partly, that I'm being picky by being very sensitive 
to even very slight deviations from the blacks I'm wanting, but I'm not 
really happy. Also, I'm very much into the idea of going for smaller 
prints at very high resolution (i.e. 720ppi or 360ppi where feasible), 
so seeing the demo that is currently showing on the Piezography web site 
is, obviously, very interesting. I'm most tempted by the split tone 
option, or failing that the neutral black. I'll probably give the 
individual carts a try, then maybe move to a continuous ink system if 
I'm happy with the results.

So, the question I have is firstly: are there any serious gotchas I 
should know about before going that route? Secondly, since I've mostly 
concentrated on Epson Premium Glossy + ABW and factory inks previously, 
I'm not familiar with the kinds of paper that work well with the K7 ink 
set. I'm not wedded to a glossy finish, but I don't want to end up with 
poor blacks or have to lose a lot of resolution, so something quite 
smooth and fine-grained. I'd probably prefer rather less OBAs than Epson 
Premium Glossy too, because I've had difficulty matching it to mat board 
in the past without it ending up looking excessively blue (which might 
also have a hand in my colour cast problems, now that I think about it). 
I'm prepared to give a few papers a try, but there are so many out there 
currently that an idea of where to start would be much appreciated.

The other thing I'm wondering about currently is whether or not, if I go 
this route, it will be sensible to get hold of a spectrophotometer, and 
if so, which one. Again, any advice you might have would be gratefully 
appreciated. In particular, I'd like to be able to soft-proof the K7 
inks on-screen in Photoshop before exporting a TIFF for printing (I use 
Windows) -- the QTR documentation hints at this, but I'm not really sure 
where to start.

I realise I'm probably starting yet another long-running thread here, 
but I think it will be pretty interesting all the same. :-)

Thank you in advance,
Sarah