Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Tyler Boley" <tyler@...> wrote:
>
> Michal, as much as I like Monaco, I don't think the neutral axis build is it's strong suit. Do I recall that you also have GPS? It's neutral build is far superior, though for color images, perceptual conversions, Monaco is really great particularly for matte papers.
> I assume you are using as much GCR as possible? I was disappointed in the black curve options in Profiler Gold and did the best I could to make a custom curve straight line, though it won't take K all the way up the scale. I hear Platinum might have more K curve control.
> I don't know if more patches is going to help, it just uses a lot of color ink in the neutral axis which is going to be hard to make perfect B&W from, but that's also how it makes great full saturation dark color transitions.
> Have you tried the tuning functions? I believe Walker told me he tunes all his Monaco profiles...
> Tyler
> http://www.custom-digital.com/


I can only speak of the Platinum level of Profiler... Never had any problems with neutrality as long as the RIP was properly set up and as long as I used a custom GCR. I was certainly able to make the GCR a straight line from white to black if that was what I wanted.

And no Profiler will not take custom targets. As far as I know the scripts do a little calculation to put things where Profiler expects them to be. I'm going to try and push them sometime this week to either put custom targets into Profiler as well as a few other features, or give a really good discount on a cross grade to the top level Gretag software.

If you want additional blacks, try the ECI2002 or the IT8.7 4 targets, those both have a lot of good black patches. I used to use the ECI2002 a lot with Printopen but when I went to Profiler for most things I started to use the standard Profiler 1379 or 2989 cmyk targets. The IT8.7 3 extended might work too since it has a decent number of blacks and a ramp. (look at the Spectroscan charts in "standard layout" to get a feel for what they offer)

If you are going to use the ECI2002 or IT8.7 4 targets, make sure you have the latest Colorport (1.5.4) and the latest Profiler (4.8.3) because there were some patches out of order with previous versions.

If need be you can save (and zip) a Profiler session and I can run it through for you so you can see if the difference between gold and platinum makes a difference. If you really want I can send you a Colorport pattern that you can configure and measure and I'll run it through Printopen for you. I'll have to generate the XML file because Printopen doesn't measure in the same order as the other devices on the ECI2002 target. Heidelberg really did a good job of explaining why the target was laid out the way it is, and after you measure enough of them with something like a dtp22 you start to learn what is going on. Thank the printing gods for scanning spectros!