Bob,
You wrote:
>I just received MIS FS and FS-N inks.
>As I understand it - the K inks are the same?
Yes, the blacks are the same, and they are the only inks that are the same
in the two inksets.
>Can the positions be mixed
>eg. C with C, M with M, and Y with Y?
Definitely. That is part of the plan. You'll notice I also published a
formula for an FS-Sepia. My thought was to have everyone have the ability
to easily mix any tone they'd like from sepia to a hair cool.
Because the FS inks are the same visual density and compatible, if you
wanted to make an FS that was, for example, just a hair on the warm side of
neutral, you could mix the two inksets and make your own custom warmth.
In fact, the FS-N is a hair cool. So, if you want to make a dead-on neutral
with a particular paper, you can do some testing and mix the FS and FS-N in
the ratio that you find gets you the tone you're after on that particular
paper. (And tones are definitely affected by the paper type.) You could
even mix slightly different ratios for the different positions for a mild
split-tone affect.
I've found that counting drops of ink into a bottle cap, mixing it with a
flat screwdriver, and then swabbing the mix on the paper of choice with a
Q-tip is a good way to see how various mix ratios will look.
>How close are the relative densities of the two insets?
They are supposed to be the same. That way, you can mix the FS and FS-N in
any ratio (keeping the C with C, etc., of course) and you'll end up with the
same densities and ready to print with Peizo or one of the Epson workflows
with no having to think about ink density at all.
Happy mixing.
Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com