Digital BW, The Print

Yes Dan, and there are millions of pieces of "art" hanging on the walls of
offices and homes that were printed using the offset press.

There is nothing wrong with being picky if you have some other way of
supporting yourself. If you need to produce your art so you can eat, then
you have to know when to let it go and sell it.

I for one am quickly learning that I like to eat more than I like to nit
pick my art.

Jim Davis
http://www.visual-artists.com
jarthurdavis@...
support@...
Fine art pigment printmaker

>
> > Sometimes, as artists and printmakers, I think we are just too damn
picky!
> >
> > Jim Davis
> > http://www.visual-artists.com
>
> I don't know - I started my art dabbling in the early seventies and I
> remember that no *true* artist would ever consider a CMYK offset print to
be
> suitable for art.  Silkscreen and Lithography on fine art paper yes.
Fiber
> backed B&W paper yes, resin no.    Cibachrome - well maybe someday, if it
> turns out to last and you can get it to look more like air dried glossy.
> But plain old vanilla CMYK was a cheapo thing you did for catalogs and
> magazines, not serious work -- except for a small art movement lead by a
few
> New York art types that made mass production and lack of impermanence the
> statement of the art.  So fussiness sure isn't a new phenomenon.
>
> For me - I just like to be picky and fussy 'cause that's my nature and I
> don't need or even want art to be a significant source of my income so I
can
> engage in that luxury. Heck, I probably ought to just paint - but that is
so
> low tech don't you know.  Whatever turns your crank and/or pays the bills.
> :-)
>
> Dan
>
>
>
>
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>
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>
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>

Hmmmmmmmmmm...... Any XY engineers out there? Days of the Forox and compound
tables are starting to raise their nasty heads again. I knew there was a
reason to get my brother to reopen his machine shop.

Jim Davis
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What's the point of traffic...if no one's buying your art?
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http://www.visual-artists.com
> > Why not a flatbed printer, say 3x4 feet, with 2 sets of separate 6 color
> > heads. The paper would be vacuum held to the bed. One set of heads would
> > make a pass and drop the CMYKLcLm the second head would follow and drop
the
> > next 6 colors. Engineers are smart enough to build such printers now,
the
> > alignment of the two set of heads can already be done. The software side
of
> > it may be a bit of a challange. After reading Dan's post that may also
be
> > relative simple. The big thing would be the cost. You are not going to
be
> > able to buy this printer for $5000.00
> >
> > Jim Davis
>
> Back when I thought I might be able to get reasonable registration between
> two 3000 printers I filled one 3000 with MIS CMYK inks and another with
MIS
> light cyan and light magenta with the remaining two channels reserved for
a
> blue and violet whenever they should appear.  I found I could make a
profile
> based on running the target file the same way I ran the print - make a
spot
> bump channel for the light cyan and light magenta and suppress the regular
> cyan and regular magenta in the highlights.  But that was in Photoshop 5
> days and I needed to do it with two profiles and a curve - one profile to
> convert the RGB to standard printer RGB space and the other (a faux CMYK
> profile) to preview the file as I applied the curve that suppressed the
> highlights while I turned on the bump spot channels.  In other words it
was
> a pain in the rump but showed promise, even with the RGB driver.  But the
> lack of registration between two separate 3000s was pretty much the killer
> of that idea.  Really it is mostly a matter of some sort of multi-strike
> printing with very good registration.  If someone made a printer like you
> suggest and it didn't break the bank I'd be stuffing it with multi-hued
inks
> and spending all my time in experimental bliss - especially since I could
> put in multiple grays as well!
>
> Blatner and Fraser describe how to do a bump plate in Real World Photoshop
> and reference a plug-in that does it automatically.  Not all that hard to
do
> actually - at least not hard compared to some manual quad separation
methods
> - but getting a way to profile and preview the combination of the regular
> inks and the added inks is what becomes difficult (or at least complex and
> confusing).  The spot channel controls in Photoshop only approximate the
> appearance of the resulting print but if you have a large run and can
tweak
> the file until it prints right that might be a reasonable approach.  In
> Photoshop 6 you convert to standard printer RGB space, turn on the RGB
> softproof feature with the black ink simulation feature, then lay in a
spot
> channel and adjust its color and opacity to match a test print.
>
> For experimenters: there is no reason that these bump plates have to be
> limited to non-standard inks on a special printer.  If you can roll back a
> 7000 and reprint or get reasonable double strike capability with some
other
> printer you can bump any standard ink (including the black in quadtone
> printers) by making a spot channel and turning it off on the first strike
> then turning it on (and turning the main image off) on the second strike.
I
> think someone posted something like that on this list about a month back -
> but again, making an *accurate* previewing profile might get pretty nasty.
>
> Dan
>
>
>
>
> Please visit the Group Homepage to check the Files, Bookmarks, Polls and
other resources as they are often being updated. The page is at:

>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint
>
>
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