Digital BW, The Print

Tyler,

Txs for the prints, arrived safely to UK.
I was interested in;

1) evaluating the selenium K7 print colour and tonality as something that I
might want to embrace.

Conclusion I love both the colour and tonality, especially on IGFS.
Definitely want to be able to get that in my images.

2) evaluating how close I could emulate the K7 selenium look on my 7880
using ABW (using QTR ICC), both to decide if I should invest in a K7 set up,
but also to evaluate if my workflow could produce a comparable print.

Tonality was spot on with the first print, and I have done nothing to
manipulate the image directly.
After about 10 test prints on IGFS, tweaking the ABW "colour wheel", I was
able to create a print that to my eye is very nearly identical in colour as
well. I have compared the images inch by inch and if I was to be hyper
critical I might say that the K7 print might be slightly smoother in the
very bright highlights. But that also might be a side effect of the GLOP
coat which I don't have a setup to apply today.

In fact I felt that one of the test prints was actually a better print of
the image than the K7. In particular because it had slightly better
definition of the small shells in the center of the image. But that's just
personal choice.

Conclusion so far, my profiled ABW setup is more than capable of replicating
the K7 look close enough that I will not be investing in a K7 set up.
Clearly one has other factors here like cost of inks, volume etc. But for me
doing just my own personal work, I prefer the flexibility of getting B&W and
colour out of one printer, if I don't have to compromise on quality. There
is also the issue of permanence, I am confident that either solution is good
for 50 years and that's more than long enough for me.

One additional point, in my experience of moving from a 4800 to 7880, the
quality of PK ABW printing on the 7880 is much better. I am not sure my
conclusions would have been the same using the 4800 PK ABW.

3) Effectiveness of GLOP coat.

Very effective. Gets rid of that irritating gloss differential. Possibly
smooths the highlights a little as well -TBD. I want this capability. Think
I'll set my old 4800 up as a 2nd pass glop machine asap using QTR (along
side being an MK ABW printer).

Tyler txs for much for sharing these prints with us. It's really helped me
move my printing forward.
Would love to know more about how you apply your Glop. One channel? What ink
limit?
Do you pause between passes? Why did the glop spash into the margins?

Also you mentioned in another email that the Ultrasmooth print quality
varied with changes in the speed of printing (pause between passes). In what
way does this show in the print? I have never had time to explore this
aspect of printing myself.

Txs again.

Mike

PS: My 7880 ABW setup for anyone wanting to replicate my results is, print
QTR Create ICC profiles with setting normal, CD+20 and colour wheel 0,0.
 Then print using that profile but set colour wheel to 10H, 23V (some
tonality very slightly yellower) or 12H, 20V (some tonality very slightly
redder). Once you have the colour settings that work you can create another
profile with those settings that can be used to softproof the colour as
well.


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