Digital BW, The Print

This past week I finally got around to trying a QTR/7600 setup I've 
been thinking of for some time: Printing with black & light black 
only, and setting up the inks for a neutral print with those two 
only. The idea is to get a less dotty print than BO, but preserve 
the excellent dmax and mid-tone/highlight luminosity that method 
provides. Also, to reduce as much as possible the quantity of color 
inks being mixed in, since the colors are still the weakest link.

This is what I did: The K is Eboni, or for RC papers I suppose I'll 
use PKN.  Haven't tried that yet.  For LK I started out with UT-7 
LK, having read in posts that it had been 'neutralized'. It turned 
out to be much too cold, so I mixed two parts UT-7 LK with one part 
standard MIS LK, and added 60 drops of UC magenta to 130ml of mixed 
ink for the final result. 'Two steps forward, one back' in terms of 
limiting color ink use, but the result is a very neutral LK that is 
a good smooth match for the Eboni.

The QTR curves I used initially are the two UC-EEnh Matte-warm-1 
curves, they use only the K and LK inks, and normally produce an 
almost sepia pure-carbon print. 

The results have been quite gratifying: The greyscale ramp is smooth 
and even, much less dotty than BO, and quite neutral. I compared 
prints between UT-1 on my 7500, and this setup, and while the UT-1 
was less dotty, the 2k system had better dmax, and all the sparkle 
I'd been missing and looking for all this time. I'm quite relieved 
that it works so well, because switching inks on this beast  is 
getting to be a nuisance.

This of course leaves me with a bit of work to do to compensate for 
that LKN ink. My first concern was to do a color profile for 
Photorag, and verify I could still get normal color. No problem 
there.

Next I wanted to find out what the change did to other curves for 
QTR.  The 7600 has a much more limited set of curves with it, so it 
didn't take long to run through them. I'm using a 50% mix on all ov 
them; at the moment I see no reason to add slider permutations to 
the mix.

The UC-EHM curves I have avaialble are:  -cool SE-1
                                         -sepia-1
                                         -Warm-1
					 -neutral-1

As I mentioned above, the-warm-1 curves produce a dead-on neutral 
print. 
The combination of:   	-cool SE-1  and sepia-1 also produce almost 
a dead-on neutral print in a 50% mix-there's just a hint of magenta 
in the midtones

-sepia-1  and sepia-1   produces a nice rich chocolaty sepia, with 
good density and no yellowing in the highlights

-cool-SE-1 and cool-SE-1 produce a blue cold tone, no hint of magenta

-cool SE-1 and neutral-1 go another solid step into blue.

-neutral-1 and neutral-1 gives about the same degree of blue as 
above, but much too dark.


Comparing the dottiness between the 2K prints and the multi-ink 
prints from this printer, I'm finding that if there is a difference, 
I'm having a hard time seeing it. We compared BO, 2K and multi-ink 
UT prints on Clayton's 2200 a few nights back, and there was a more 
obvious difference, so I think printer and dot size make a 
difference.

 All in all, I see this as a good viable alternative that produces 
exceptional results, so for a while it will be my setup of choice 
for the 7600.

Steve Karafyllakis