Digital BW, The Print

......and seeing some great advise and comments.  I'm thinking of
dedicating a 1270 to b&w.  Any suggestions/tips for a newbie?

Also was reading a thread about cleaning.....here's part of it:

"I was able to temporarily clean up the mess on my 1280 print heads by
placing a Windex-soaked paper towel under my heads, and running the
carriage back and forth over the towel."

Can someone elaborate a bit more on this?  All I do is put the carts
in, so how would I do the above.

TIA,

-mp

At 01:32 AM 1/8/04 +0000, you wrote:
>......and seeing some great advise and comments.  I'm thinking of
>dedicating a 1270 to b&w.  Any suggestions/tips for a newbie?
>
>Also was reading a thread about cleaning.....here's part of it:
>
>"I was able to temporarily clean up the mess on my 1280 print heads by
>placing a Windex-soaked paper towel under my heads, and running the
>carriage back and forth over the towel."
>
>Can someone elaborate a bit more on this?  All I do is put the carts
>in, so how would I do the above.
>
>TIA,
>
>-mp

MP,

With the printer off reach under the leading edge (left side) of the print 
head carriage assembly and pull the white plastic lever forward.  You may 
need a pen or other tool. The head will now move across the ways.  Roll a 
finger size pad of cotton rag or paper towel soaked but not dripping and 
lay it ahead of the head carriage.  The carriage can now pass over it. Run 
it back and forth. It may skrunch up so roll the pad again so that the 
carriage passes across it enough to reach the heads.  When done, 
re-position the head all the way to the right before turning the printer 
on.  BTW Paper towel may leave lint so cotton T-shirt rag is best.

I've been using my 1280 for BO printing and am delighted with the results. 
Today I'm testing a sepia ink mix made from MIS M, Y, and Eboni black.  Has 
anyone tried mixing custom pig colors for mono-tone?

AZ



Build a Lookaround!
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> Today I'm testing a sepia ink mix made from MIS M, Y, and Eboni
black.  Has 
> anyone tried mixing custom pig colors for mono-tone?

Howdy Alan!

I did the same thing this week since I am out of ink and had one color
cartridge to play with... 
my current frankenstein mix is:
C = MIS VM C
LC = MIS VM LC
M = custom mix toner, eyeballed to match the UT M
LM = custom mix toner, eyeballed to match the UT LM
Y = half VM Y and half UT Y (leftovers basically!)
K = Epson 2000P OEM K

I love to play like this!!!

anyone else like the look of color images printed with the VM or UT
inks? no conversion to grayscale, no curves..!

sometimes it's really cool!

Happy Printing!
Tom

> I'm testing a sepia ink mix made from MIS M, Y, and Eboni black.  ...

Beware mixing different ink families.  They can be incompatible.  Eboni is
particularly sensitive and will precipitate unpredictably in all of the
available bases I've tried.  (Epson matte black is about the same.)

It's safest to, for example, to stay with a family of inks that are
engineered to be together.  I've been using the MIS 7600 family for the inks
I've been mixing lately.  Sadly, this family does not include Eboni.  The
only reason we can use it is because it is in a separate jet.  The MIS Photo
K, however, is in the 7600 family.  The older inks -- MIS VM, FS, original
Archival (not GP) do well with the older MIS base.  The 7600 family,
unfortunately, uses a special base that MIS might not sell.

What I've done with the UT2 inkset is designate the Yellow position as not
only the sepia toner position, but also a position that is available for
custom mixes.  Then the Sepia curves will probably print the custom mix.
Yet, the inkset will still be able to print the usual neutral through carbon
tones with the existing curves.  (They put so little of the yellow position
ink in the mix that the custom mix will probably not affect the image
significantly.  If it does, I can probably limit the yellow even more.)

For inputs in custom ink mixing for the yellow position of the UT2 inkset,
the whole MIS 7600 family of inks is readily available, but without the
clear base.  The current mix is 84% UT2 light magenta.  With 8% Y and 8% M,
this sepia tone can be printed with no additional inks all to and slightly
beyond 50%.  After that the carbon (magenta position) inks have to come in
to add more density.  However, especially if the mix is warm, the tone will
be controlled mostly by the custom mix.  IF the tone is cold, substitute the
cyan or a mix of cyan and magenta (which can be made to be neutral) to add
the required density.

If your custom mix is going to have stronger tones, to keep the density of
the yellow position ink about the same as it is now, the UT hex yellow
position ink can be used as a lighter gray base. 

You can get the densities very close to what you need by using Q-tip swabs
on EEM.  Just visual matching is enough to make the inksets work.  Don't
stick the Q-tip in completely in the ink, but rather let it touch the
surface and soak up the test ink.  Pull it out of the ink just before the
Q-tip is fully soaked.

For test mixing, Try counting drops into a bottle cap.  I use a big flat
screw-driver to dip out one drop at a time.  Let the drop slowly form and
fall into the cap.  This drop counting will get you amazingly close to
workable percentages.

The resulting inkset will, of course, continue to be RC compatible also.

At any rate, one of my goals with the UT2 inkset is to facilitate custom
mixing.  I'm sure that are lots more old darkroom hackers out there like me
who will never be satisfied just buying someone else's mix.

Have fun.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com

At 02:06 PM 1/8/04 -0800, you wrote:
> > I'm testing a sepia ink mix made from MIS M, Y, and Eboni black.  ...
>
>Beware mixing different ink families.  They can be incompatible.  Eboni is
>particularly sensitive and will precipitate unpredictably in all of the
>available bases I've tried.  (Epson matte black is about the same.)
>
>It's safest to, for example, to stay with a family of inks that are
>engineered to be together.  I've been using the MIS 7600 family for the inks
>I've been mixing lately.  Sadly, this family does not include Eboni.  The
>only reason we can use it is because it is in a separate jet.  The MIS Photo
>K, however, is in the 7600 family.  The older inks -- MIS VM, FS, original
>Archival (not GP) do well with the older MIS base.  The 7600 family,
>unfortunately, uses a special base that MIS might not sell.

Paul,

Thanks for this info. Just when I thought I was on to something great!   My 
sepia concoction is for BO printing. I used Eboni with archival color ink 
but will now switch to another pig black. My reading of the MIS archival 
ink pages informs me that they regularly "improve" the black and it then 
becomes their standard black. I have MIS black ink going back a year or so 
(including 'double black') and should probably dump it, no?

AZ

Alan,

>... My sepia concoction is for BO printing. I used Eboni with 
>archival color ink but will now switch to another pig black.

The advantages that occur to me of a BO printing method for custom color
mixers is that they would have only one ink to mix and the driver would do
most of the work of distributing the ink fairly evenly.  A big disadvantage,
however, is that all the color inks, especially yellow, that you add to the
black reduce the dmax.  

In the UT2 system, I set up the yellow position for the sepia and custom
colors so that there would also be only one ink.  Yet, mixers will have the
neutral/warm gray to add density when the custom mix is at its maximum
density, and the separate black will be there to get a dmax as good as any
other print/inkset.

Of course the next step with the UT2 approach is to support the 2200.  The
separate carts will make it very easy to change custom mixes.

The dark sepia curve I made for EEM is a curve that can be modified very
easily for any custom ink in this system.  The custom ink carries the entire
image all the way to about 70%.  No other curve is involved until that
point.  At that point the sepia runs out of steam, so the un-toned gray ink
starts to supplement it.  I let Epson handle the cross-over.  There are no
reverse slopes and nothing complex at all here.  Finally the other/cool ink
curve is pulled in only to turn on the black.  

This is such a simple curves approach that any user can modify it to fit the
density of a custom ink by just visually moving the points up or down to get
the 5% patches to match a standardized step wedge the user has printed out
previously as a reference.  There is only one point to move per step.  The
starting point of the un-toned gray is simply moved to coincide with where
the custom mix hits full-on.  This makes for easy visual profiling.

I hope this type of approach (especially with the 2200) will open up custom
mixing to the same types of people who used to like to mess with darkroom
chemicals.

> I have MIS black ink going back a year or so 
>(including 'double black') and should probably dump it, no?

I'd dump it.  By the way, be sure to agitate bottles before loading or
mixing.  All these pigs settle.  Note the Epson instructions about such.

I'm glad to see others out there like to mess around with custom mixes.  I
hope my efforts encourage and simplify this.  I have always thought of
messing with B&W chemicals as part of the fun and a source of creativity.
Combine this with the Photoshop curves workflows and ability to use, for
example, a standard neutral tone in one area and the custom tone in another
selected area, and the B&W printer has a lot to play with.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com 


____________________________________________________________


At 02:06 PM 1/8/04 -0800, you wrote:
> > I'm testing a sepia ink mix made from MIS M, Y, and Eboni black.  ...
>
>Beware mixing different ink families.  They can be incompatible.  Eboni is
>particularly sensitive and will precipitate unpredictably in all of the
>available bases I've tried.  (Epson matte black is about the same.)
>
>It's safest to, for example, to stay with a family of inks that are
>engineered to be together.  I've been using the MIS 7600 family for the
inks
>I've been mixing lately.  Sadly, this family does not include Eboni.  The
>only reason we can use it is because it is in a separate jet.  The MIS
Photo

>K, however, is in the 7600 family.  The older inks -- MIS VM, FS, original
>Archival (not GP) do well with the older MIS base.  The 7600 family,
>unfortunately, uses a special base that MIS might not sell.