Digital BW, The Print

Hello Arlene,

Thanks for the good feedback.  I'm glad the articles are helpful

>Life is calmer with the K3 and 7800 than it was with UT7 and the 
>7600. But I can't decide which paper setting is best. Do you  
>advise Enhanced Matte or Velvet Fine Art with the HPR? 

Well, in my article I recommend using the VFA setting for all matte
papers because I found it works very well with everything I tried,
including HPR, a paper I also use.  But keep in mind that that is
meant to be a good and easy way to get started, not necessarily the
last word.  Ultimately, people who are interested enough will
experiment with other things and there may well be a better setting. 
And a custom profile for the paper could make a significant
difference, too.   

As for the EM setting, in the beginning I tried that and others with
several papers and VFA came up the winner in every case for my simple
workflow (among other things, because it handled the colors better -
those settings contain color instructions as well as linearization
curves).  In my testing I've found that most of the good papers have
similar contrast curves.  The VFA setting seems to be right in the
middle of the ball park and works great with EEM for proofing.  So for
other papers, slight adjustments on "paper curves" to match the proof
are easy to accomplish.  And of course it's designed for VFA, one of
my most used papers.  So I've stuck with that.  

But that doesn't mean something else might not be better for HPR, so I
guess I'd say to make prints with both and see which you like best. 
Try some low key and high key images, and one with large important
middle gray areas.  Look for color distribution and shadow separation
as well as over all linearization, and don't forget proofing, however
you do that.  Compare across the entire workflow.  It's been over two
years since I did that kind of testing, so I'd be interested to hear
what you find.

Did you see my post about cooler LK/LLK?  Have you noticed any
difference in recently purchased ink?


>I tried a sample of  H Fine Art Pearl 285 gsm with the matte black I 
>was blown away by the  difference. It really popped. Next to it, the 
>print on HPR looked faded.The  FAP + K3 matte makes me look 
>like a better photographer! 

I know what you mean.  I haven't tried that paper but have tried
several others.  I'm torn because I love the better dmax, but don't
like the glare and the gloss differential.  And the prints, in spite
of the dmax, lack some depth and richness of the good matte papers -
something about the matte look I love.  I'm tempted to switch
sometimes, but when I look at the prints side by side I still like the
matte better.  I'm not desirous of having my prints look like silver
prints, it's only the dmax that attracts me.  I love prints without
glare.  These glossy prints are so hard to look at, having to turn
them just so to avoid the glare.  I find them very annoying.  So I'm
sort of bouncing back and forth about it.  Maybe one day some new
paper will blow me away and I'll switch.  Or maybe someone will figure
out how to get 2.0 dmax on matte paper...Yahooo!



>I know one is  not supposed to use a luster paper with matte black - 
>but why not, if it looks so good? 

Is there any problem with the MK rubbing off?


BTW, I have your great UT7 quote about the "weird intravenous hospital
ward" with "tantrums, hysterics and melt-downs" tacked up here right
over my monitor.  I love it and always get a good laugh.  A thousand
thanks for that.

Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm
I-Trak 2.1   http://www.cjcom.net/itrak.htm