Digital BW, The Print

I've been up and running with QTR on a 9600 Ultrachrome for a few weeks 
now.  I like the CoolSe curve for many pics.  But I still haven't been able to 
come up with a blend yet that I consider "neutral."  I'd appreciate it if people 
could share what blending settings people are using for neutral printing.  I 
realize this may be different depending on the tone of the paper you're 
printing on -- I've been printing mostly on Premier Art and Photo Rag -- so if 
you could specify, e.g., "85% CoolSe blended with %15 Warm on Photo Rag, 
75% Cool with 25% Warm on Enhanced matte", that would be helpful.

Also, have people come up with "canned" QTR ultrachrome 9600 curves for 
neutral printing that I could download?  The supplied ones are CoolSe, Cool 
and Warm, but no "neutral."  Thanks!

Oh, and any updates on when and if QTR will support the Epson 4000?

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "chipcarterdc" 
<chipcarterdc@h...> wrote:
> I've been up and running with QTR on a 9600 Ultrachrome for a few weeks 
> now.  I like the CoolSe curve for many pics.  But I still haven't been able to 
> come up with a blend yet that I consider "neutral."  I'd appreciate it if people 
> could share what blending settings people are using for neutral printing.  I 
> realize this may be different depending on the tone of the paper you're 
> printing on -- I've been printing mostly on Premier Art and Photo Rag -- so if 
> you could specify, e.g., "85% CoolSe blended with %15 Warm on Photo Rag, 
> 75% Cool with 25% Warm on Enhanced matte", that would be helpful.
> 
> Also, have people come up with "canned" QTR ultrachrome 9600 curves for 
> neutral printing that I could download?  The supplied ones are CoolSe, Cool 
> and Warm, but no "neutral."  Thanks!
> 
> Oh, and any updates on when and if QTR will support the Epson 4000?

Hi Chip,

I don't regularly use a 7600/9600 so I don't have a favorite setup.
But actually I doubt that any specific blend will be perfect for everyone
in every lighting.   Can you tell how some of the blends you have tried
are off from the neutral you are looking for?   Is it that the blending is
not fine enough?  Or you need a different direction in color space?

As far as the 4000, the major issue is receiving my printer.  I'm still a
ways down on the waiting list.   With some luck I'd hope to have it in
July and support it soon after.

Roy

Jeez, I wish I knew how to describe it precisely, so as to offer real feedback for 
your future QTR development.  Let me try: on Ultrasmooth with an 85% 
CoolSe and 15% Warm combo (that's the print I happen to have in front of 
me), the hue still leans to the warm side of what I consider neutral.  My 
"neutral" reference is a print of a similar image on Ilford Multigrade IV wet 
darkroom paper and a print of the same image on Ultrasmooth from 
ImagePrint 5.5 -- I realize, however, that neutrality is subjective. It's no longer 
the light purplish of the pure CoolSe tone, but it's also not as, well, gray as the 
reference prints.  Knowing nothing about color theory, I don't know if I'm 
saying "I'd like to see some more magenta/cyan or whatever."  I'll sit down 
later and think about this a bit more to see if I can come up with more precise 
feedback. 

Just to be clear: I am by no means knocking QTR -- I love it!  I just wish there 
was a canned neutral curve for various papers (which I imagine is part of the 
problem, given that each paper has an inherent tone).  I also wish they'd hurry 
up and get you your 4000!

> 
> Hi Chip,
> 
> I don't regularly use a 7600/9600 so I don't have a favorite setup.
> But actually I doubt that any specific blend will be perfect for everyone
> in every lighting.   Can you tell how some of the blends you have tried
> are off from the neutral you are looking for?   Is it that the blending is
> not fine enough?  Or you need a different direction in color space?
> 
> As far as the 4000, the major issue is receiving my printer.  I'm still a
> ways down on the waiting list.   With some luck I'd hope to have it in
> July and support it soon after.
> 
> Roy

> I realize, however, that neutrality is 
> subjective. It's no longer 
> the light purplish of the pure CoolSe tone, but it's also not 
> as, well, gray as the 
> reference prints.  Knowing nothing about color theory, I 
> don't know if I'm 
> saying "I'd like to see some more magenta/cyan or whatever."  

I think what you're after is the possibility to change the amounts of
cyan and magenta in relation to each other in addition to changing the
total amount of toner applied to the print.

This is exactly what I was experienting with when I made a cyan toner
for my UT7 inkset instead of the sepia toner. I found that with a little
bit added cyan the prints, to my eyes, looked more neutral than the
standard purplish selenium tone that seems to be so popular nowadays.

I'm not sure what it would take to support this in QTR, we're really
talking about using a mixture of three profiles instead of two, or at
least be able to run two toners on top of each other in one profile.

--
Daniel Staver
http://daniel.staver.no

One way to make selecting a mix easier would be to have a little module which would print 
a step wedge say 11 times on the same page with a varying mix ranging from 100% curve 
1 to 100% curve 2 in 10% increments.  I am not sure how difficult this would be but it 
would be a useful addition to the QTR workset.