Digital BW, The Print

Hi,
my first set of UT bottles connected to my 1160 will run out soon, so I have
to decide quickly what to go on with. Before the UT set I used the FSN
inkset, I can`t really judge how good or bad it was, because my general
level of photography was inferior to what I do now.

So my question is: Is there an advantage to using Full Spectrum neutral over
UT? My impression is that FSN ressembles more to a really neutral tone than
UT. With UT and the N curve it nevertheless depends on the lightness of the
print- Some prints show up warmer, some cooler - never really consistent.

Thanks for any input.

Bernhard,

>...Is there an advantage to using Full Spectrum neutral over UT? 
>My impression is that FSN ressembles more to a really neutral tone 
>than UT.

On Epson Enhanced/Archival Matte the FS-N is slightly cool.  The Ultra Tone
with the neutral curve is more neutral, with a hint of magenta, giving it
that "selenium" toned look.

On warmer papers, the FS-N might be closer to neutral and the UT might be a
bit warm.  The curves of the UT inkset, of course, can be tweaked to get a
more even tone than the FS-N.  Some papers, for example, print with cold
shadow tones.

The UT inkset will fade less, although the FS is also non-warming on EEM.

>With UT and the N curve it nevertheless depends on the lightness of the
>print- Some prints show up warmer, some cooler - never really consistent.

I'm not sure what would cause this.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com

Paul Roark wrote:
> On warmer papers, the FS-N might be closer to neutral and the UT
> might be a
> bit warm.  The curves of the UT inkset, of course, can be tweaked to
> get a  more even tone than the FS-N.

Hello Paul, is there an step by step explanation somewhere, how to do that
without spoiling everyting? I would indeed make the "N" curve a very little
but cooler without getting it near the cool curve. At which color to start
and how to edit it exactly?

>> With UT and the N curve it nevertheless depends on the lightness of
>> the print- Some prints show up warmer, some cooler - never really
>> consistent.
>
> I'm not sure what would cause this.
>
I will have to explore it more exactly, but my theory was that according to
the lightness or darkness the pront uses more of  the one or the other ink -
one can see it easily on the file with fancy colors (the curves applied for
pronting). My understanding of the phenomenon was that the 3 colors dont
have the same grade of warmth, so according to which one is most used in the
print it seems warmer or cooler - but I didn't study it systematically. The
difference however seems clear. I just finished printing several hundred
photos from my India trip and some seem to be made with another inkset, even
when the N curve is applied.

Or might it be that I do thewrong procedure? Is it absolutely necessary to
first convert to BW and then back to RGB? It might happen that I sometimes
just apply a channel mixer (grayscale) but dont really convert to 8bit BW
and back to RGB then.

regards bernie

Bernhard,

Dirk Hobman wrote a nice tutorial on how to tweak curves that has been
posted at http://www.inksupply.com/index.cfm?source=html/whatsnew.html.


>> On warmer papers, the FS-N might be closer to neutral and the UT
>> might be a bit warm.  The curves of the UT inkset, of course,
>>can be tweaked to get a more even tone than the FS-N.

>At which color to start and how to edit it exactly?

The toner is in the yellow spot on quads, the magenta spot on hextone
printers.  I'd start by just pulling the toner curve down to add more toner.
It is a very light ink, so it will not add that much density.  You can
offset the density, however, by moving the light gray (quad magenta, hex
yellow) the other direction by the same amount.

>...My understanding of the phenomenon was that the 3 colors don't
>have the same grade of warmth, so according to which one is most 
>used in the print it seems warmer or cooler ...

The toner is a light, low gamut blue ink that is in only one color position.
It is used to cool down the warm carbon inks in the other positions.
However, the distribution of the toner is done by the RGB curves only in the
printing workflow.  The original grayscale file should end up having the
same hue/tone throughout its midtones. 

>Is it absolutely necessary to first convert to BW and then back to RGB? ...

I recommend it.  If the original file is RGB and carrier any of that
information over to the final printing file, it will throw the system off. 

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com 




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