Digital BW, The Print

> IP5 was very painful$$$, but it seems to deliver some nice b&w.

How is the IP5 dither pattern, compared to the 1280 Epson or 1280 Piezo?

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Moreno Polloni" 
<mp@d...> wrote:
> > IP5 was very painful$$$, but it seems to deliver some nice b&w.
> 
> How is the IP5 dither pattern, compared to the 1280 Epson or 1280 
Piezo?

Well, you're asking questions I can't fully answer until I do a number 
of prints, esp. 12 x 18. Right now I'm limited to 8x10 inch on 
Photorag, because my Eclipse Satine is being profiled now. I don't 
have any large photorag right now. a small enough print can print good 
on more workflows it seems to me.

I used MIS VM with Paul's curves on an 1280- actually Paul gave me 
some curves that are for 2880 dpi he never quite finished. When I 
compare a few prints done in this manner on Eclipse paper with the 
IP5/2200/ at 1440 dpi on Photorag the BIG thing I notice is more 
smoothness in gradation of tone with 2200/IP5. It is beautiful how 
light melts into darker. Another way to see this is to compare Paul's 
enhanced step wedge- the side of it where it gradates from 0 to 100%k. 
Using Paul's curves with paramenters as above, it looks more choppy, 
although you'd never think it was until you put the IP5 wedge next to 
it.

Not to say that Paul's curves aren't good, he's done a wonderful job 
and I've been using them now for almost a year...and remember I'm 
using special unfinished curves. And comparing across two different 
papers.

I used the old Piezo inks on an 1160, and that was quite some time 
ago. I'm sure I have some old prints lying around somewhere but I'd 
have to search a lot. And because I was one of the ones to get the 
inks to break down the most (greenies, DSS, call it whatever) I might 
not be sure of getting a fair comparison.

I'll comment on the uniformity of the step wedges with IP5 as best I 
can too. When I do a step wedge with the tint picker in the middle of 
the "box" at (50,50) under an Ott-LIte the wedge really does look 
neutral. I'm still trying to figure out if any color shift occurs when 
I step outdoors or turn a tungsten lamp on...I'm sure some is 
unavoidable just because of the color of light source.

But the thing that stands out here is that all the stripes are of 
uniform hue. The 60%k stripe say is not more magenta than the 40%k 
stripe. And the 95% stripe is discernable from the 100%k, although I 
have trouble following all of the 1 percent increments from 95% to 
100K on the enhanced wedge strip. OTOH, I can make out the 5% to 0% 
quite easily.

I have been preferring the right half of the tint picker box. It adds 
in a little more red or magenta. The top right corner of the box gives 
me a warm print and the bottom right a colder print. In this case one 
sees hue in the stripes, maybe more is detectable in the midtones, but 
this may be the way it supposed to work.

Finally a disclaimer: this is only my eye, and others may be more 
sensitive to problems with tone, etc. It just looks good to me.

 Oh, and I'm finaly getting convinced that Photorag prints better than 
Eclipse<g>.
Jim H.