Digital BW, The Print

Antonis wrote:

> The good news as I see it, besides the many improvements in trueBW, is
> that the new Lucia inks are very promising for bw. I have made (and
> seen) some sample prints on SilverRag using trueBW on a 5100. My
> experience is limited in that I have not had a chance to see anything
> comparable from the HP camp. 
> 
> The gray inks in the Lucia have been tweaked since their introduction
> a year ago, as has the 5100 (compared to the 5000). Very
> significantly, the new grays have no bronzing when printing on
> glossy/semi-gloss media.
> 
> The other important improvement is that the grays seem to belong to a
>  single hue and a fairly neutral one at that (a long way from the
> usual warm UC). This translates to far less need for other colours to
> come in  and neutralize the scale when printing on glossy white
> papers. It also makes any toning shifts easier since all grays are in
> the same color family. The only minor exception is the photo black
> which needs a pinch of cyan to bring it in line with the grays. 

Antonis,

I'm curious what they changed in the Canon monochrome inks 
for more reasons than the gloss difference reduction. Was 
the shift from warmer to neutral ?  Any change in Dmax ? A 
change in transparency ? Which doesn't have to mean less Dmax.


The HP Z3100 MKPKkk are really neutral and with little gloss 
enhancer added the result is in my opinion excellent. In ABW 
mode of the HP  driver the inks used in the neutral setting 
are either 4 or 3 monochrome inks for matte and 3 inks for 
gloss. The only issue I see is that the ABW mode of the 
driver delivers near linear ouput for the calibrated papers 
(contrary to some early information) and the QTR profiles to 
correct that have a problem with Qimage's CM, the 
application I prefer to print from. Checking some 
possibilities to create Qimage friendly B&W profiles right now.

-- 
Met vriendelijke groeten,  Ernst


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