Digital BW, The Print

I thought I might share with you the results of my efforts to get a 
decent B/W print from my 2200. I have used the Grey Balancer and 
Monaco to profile and to say that I am pleased with the result is an 
understatement. I have printed out the improved 21 Step grey scale. 
The scale looks perfectly uniform thoughout. I can easily see 
density variation up to the 97% point. The tone is just about dead 
neutral. 
Please bare in mind that I am using the photo black and Heavy Weight 
Matte, I'm waiting delivery of Archival Matte and Matte Black ink.
The scale is better than any I have printed on my 3000 or my last 
1160. I might just sell the both of them!
One point I noticed about the Ultrachrome inks is that they take 
quite a while to "set". I noticed color differences for almost 24 
hrs. 
I know have a dual purpose printer so I'm dead chuffed to say the 
least...
I only wish I could afford a 7600!

Barry

Just ordered a roll of EEM/EAM from Atlex to learn my new/used 7000 
on, and now must hope it's not flat and yellow:-(

I also went to the MIS site to order some inks, but they seem down 
for a week while moving to larger quarters. In the meantime, I've 
begun looking over the various BW workflows available on their site. 
Things get complicated quickly. The various inksets (Original Quad, 
FS, FSN, VM and VMS quad and "hextone") are cataloged separately, 
although several reportedly have certain inks in common (at least the 
K position, and the M/Mm and C/Cc on the "Cone driver" hex sets). As 
7000 carts are $45 apiece, I thought a table of interchangable inks 
would be a useful addition to the group's files (as well as ease my 
wallet). Actually, you'd think MIS would have that info, but they 
basically do seem to rely on the kindness of strangers for R&D.

Perhaps Paul Roark could codify the "interchangable" inks used in his 
formulations and the relative % strengths of the FS/FSN/Piezo inks by 
position. I recall he's posted this information before, but I didn't 
see it in the files. Paul does have an interesting speculation in the 
list's files for reversing the Cc and Mm positions when using the 
"Cone driver" inks with the Epson six ink driver. Has anyone tried 
this?

Paul's VM system is of definite interest, and I'll meet with Bill 
Morse (who uses it on his 7000) next week, so I'm particularly 
interested in which inks are shared with FS or FS N.

John Woolf's FS lumped workflow requires special dilute Cc and Mm 
inks (3:1 according to MIS). I've seen some of his prints, and they 
are excellent. It's not clear what the resulting %s are (I assume 75% 
of whatever the M and C %s). I presume using them would also 
facilitate translating the 4 ink Randall and Roark partitioned 
approaches to 6 ink printers with the Epson drivers-anyone tried 
that? Likewise the Nevins tranfer approach. Or would the Roark 
"switch" work better?

The older Corey and Brandin 6 ink workflows specify the "Original MIS 
Hextones" (15%, 25%, 45%, 50%, 75%, 100%, according to MIS), inks 
which I'm not familiar with (tonality, stability?). Is "DD Black" the 
same as the FS K, for instance? Anyone tried FS with the dilute Cc 
and Mm in these 6 ink partitioned workflow?

I'm beginning to see why people pay big bucks for a RIP...lots of work ahead.

-Bruce

-- 
PS: Please note new ISP address, pvx@...