Digital BW, The Print

I found my ABW prints to look quite artificial. They were excellent in neutral, but I did experience the ABW as a little over blue.  I was quite put off.
 
For purely economical reasons initially, I shifted to Paul Roark's UT-3D inks and workflow.  That gives beautiful cool black prints.  I think its quite a challenge for the Epson driver to mix in just enought blue pigment without it showing.  MIS did the mixing already, so the effect is more subtle
 
I agreed with everyone who I have heard say that 2400 with K3 is amazing.  It is!  But in my experience shifting to the Eboni-based UT-3D inks took me to another level entirely.
 
Tim Atkinson 

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From: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com on behalf of daniel
Sent: Tue 2/19/2008 11:02 AM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Digital BW] color casts in ABW?



I'm printing in ABW mode on an Epson 2400 with Epson K3 inks.

My prints often have a very slight bluish color cast in the shadows; when I
stare at the print for a few minutes, the effect is enough to make them look
slightly hand-coloured. It's only noticeable on prints in which there's a
smooth gradient in the shadow tones (eg in a darkening sky, or around the
hairline in a portrait). Spectrometer readings show the effect as a dip in B*
of about 2 points at densities between 70% and 90% typically.

Has anyone else been bothered by this effect? I'm not sure if I'm expecting
too much from ABW; given that ABW uses standard settings for all papers
with a given media type, I'd expect some color shifts across papers, but I'm
surprised that it looks so bad. And I see it even on EEM too, albeit to a
lesser degree than on Entrada and Photo Rag.

--Daniel



 


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