Digital BW, The Print

Chris,

You wrote:

>Paul, ... A short while back you posted some results of experiments with a
>sepia tone variation of the MIS VM inkset.  Do you think it would be
>possible on 6-color printers such as the 1280 to... go all the
>way from sepia to cool?  ...

Note that the Sepia-to-neutral inkset that I'm finalizing will go from sepia
to neutral on EAM, cooler on Museo,  and even cooler on LPM.  That is, what
I'm shooting for will cover that range by using different papers to achieve
the coolness needed.  It will not, however, be able to get the really cold
tones of the current MIS VM inkset.

An interesting side effect of having the base gray ink tone be neutral is
that the neutral prints produce very smooth highlights.  The 5% patch on the
neutral test strip of the Sepia-N VM ink printed with my 1160 actually is
smoother than the Piezo 5% patch I print with the 1160.

You are definitely right, however, that with a 6-ink printer there are some
interesting possibilities due to the greater number or ink positions.  One
of these is to have a broader spectrum with reasonable quality.

Since the driver does the blending of the full-strength and light/photo
inks, we are stuck with what that driver does here.  Also, to get 2 toners
in, you'd have to rely on one "color" to carry the entire grayscale -- which
should actually be very feasible.

The first thing I'd try is to see how the current cyan position handles the
highlights by itself, without the current lightest ink -- the yellow
position ink.  You could write a crude curve to test this rather easily.
Just draw a 45 degree line for the cyan (red curve) and hold back the other
colors.  See how the dots look in the highlights.

Even if that experiment is not totally successful (dots too visible in
highlights), the density of the light cyan could be changed.  The first and
most obvious thing to try would be to just fill that position with the
yellow-position (lightest gray) ink.  Then you'd have the same densities as
the current quad printers, but you'd have less control of where and how the
blending takes place.

Once you're able to get a good grayscale from the cyan, the toner balancing
could be tried.  It is all very doable if you have the interest and time.

Paul