Digital BW, The Print

John,

You were right, the Ultra smooth fine art paper setting did indeed
give me one of the best results thusfar (next to Clayton Jones'
workflow), so it works for printing on Photo Rag too.

Your story about Epson's black was very reassuring to me: I see now
that I'm not the only one who encountered this problem. I had some
'reversals' too, like you.

What really puzzles me is that printing with K3 on PhotoRag apparently
still hasn't been figured out properly. Is there nobody out here who
has the recipe and/or profile for a good result? (I tried the profile
Eric Chan made, but it didn't work for me. Maybe I did something wrong).

I´ll have to work on it. But I have not decided yet if I will be using
adjustment curve layers to tweak the photo prior to printing. Or maybe
I should use QTR to create ICC profiles. They say QTR is good and not
too difficult.

Igor


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "John Vitollo"
<jvlist@...> wrote:
>
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Michael King"
<drmrking@> wrote:
> >
> > Ok so that recommendation is crap VFA is far too heavy ink load
for HPR
> > which is why you have the shadows problem.
> > The 4800 recommendation is the following - try using that - I find
it works
> > fine on 4800 and I am sure it will be good for 3800.
> > Watercolor Paper - Radiant White, 1440 dpi, Matte Black, Perceptual
> 
> Good info...also...
> 
> Try exploring other media settings to open shadows...
> 
> Don't know if the 3800 has a media setting for "Ultra Smooth", but
try that.
> 
> I did a test some time ago to find the "best" media setting for
William Turner paper on my Epson 4800.
> 
> Epson's black usually comes in hard and fast, less so with the
newest printers, and I wanted to find the media setting that has 
> smoothest black ramp from 100% to 90%.
> 
> I printed a ten patch gray ramp from 100% to 90% with five media
settings.
> 
> My Excel results are below for William Turner on the Epson 4800:
> 
> http://homepage.mac.com/johnvito/WilliamTurnerMediaSettings.png
> 
> From 100% to 90% only two media settings show fairly smooth linear
density loss, albeit stepped at times -Ultra Smooth and 
> WaterColor media settings. While the other three actually have
spiked increases in density - called reversals - on some patches. 
> For example Epson's Enhanced media setting has the same density at
the following patches: 100%, 99% and 97%. The 98% patch 
> has a lower density than 97% patch and another reversal at 94%.
> 
> My chart does show VFA media setting is crap...as Mike put it!
> 
> My media setting choice for William Turner was UltraSmooth as it has
the most smoothest linear path. If I was building a custom 
> paper profile, the profile would have less heavy lifting to do once
the "best media type" is found.
>