Digital BW, The Print

Hi folks,
  After my 1280 with UT2 became permanently jammed, I laid off
printing for a while.  But now I've taken the plunge and purchased an
R2400.  I'm happy with its color prints out of the box, but of course I
want to get back to B&W.  I never did get my shadows quite right with
the 1280 ... I can't wait to revisit some of my old favorite images
and try to beat my UT2 prints.

What I've read about ABW is not so encouraging, so I'm looking for
alternatives.  I downloaded QTR, but got stopped cold right away by the
dearth of profiles.  I'm a big fan of Epson Premium Luster -- does anyone
have a K3/2400 profile for it?  I'd also like to try the Innova Fiba
F-type, which has been making such a splash lately.  (I picked some up
today -- phew! Expensive!)

Alternately, is there something other than QTR I should try?  I'm open
to ideas, though I should say up front that I don't have calibration
equipment and I'm not looking to spend a ton more money.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

-- 
 Ben Rosengart                                          ben@...

           "A non-running computer produces fewer errors."
             -- Onur Hosten, quantum computing researcher

>What I've read about ABW is not so encouraging

ABW can make beautiful prints. It couldn't be more easy.

From all of the forum interchanges, one can conclude that the other methods
are impressive and worthy of the time and investment to learn them.

The problem is how do you know which one is the best? If time and $$$ was
infinite, I could buy all of the necessary equipment, make (or acquire) all
of the necessary profiles, buy all of the different papers, and spend
upmteen hours doing tests and then trying to objectively evaluate the
results.

But I have exhibition prints to make.

And ABW with Innova F for the last exhibition of 30 prints and ABW with Moab
Entrada for the current one of ~25 prints is producing beautiful results.

The only thing that I can strongly suggest is the use of Qimage software to
handle the printing. The results in terms of smoothness and sharpness of my
prints from Qimage (regardless of print size) compared to what comes
directly out of Photoshop is astounding.

Dave.

Dave.
-- 
My Photography: http://www.david-keenan.com
My Blog: http://www.david-keenan.com/euroblog


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Hello Ben,

>What I've read about ABW is not so encouraging, so I'm looking for
>alternatives.  I downloaded QTR, but got stopped cold right away by 
>the dearth of profiles.  I'm a big fan of Epson Premium Luster -- 
>...I'd also like to try the Innova Fiba F-type...Alternately, is 
>there something other than QTR I should try?  I'm open to ideas, 
>though I should say up front that I don't have calibration
>equipment and I'm not looking to spend a ton more money.

Not sure what you've been reading, but you might try the simple
workflow outlined in article #9 at the link below.  It produces
excellent results, doesn't require calibration or profiles, and costs
nothing to try, so it may meet your criteria.  Article #9b deals with
using that workflow with Silver Rag paper, but it can be applied to
the Innova and EPL as well.

Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm

Dave,

>...
>... Moab Entrada for the current one of ~25 prints ...

Have you found the flaking problem has been eliminated with current papers?


Paul
www.PaulRoark.com

>... Moab Entrada for the current one of ~25 prints ...

> Have you found the flaking problem has been eliminated with current papers

Paul --

Funny you ask that tonight.

Actually the flaking is pretty bad. I never really noticed before but while
sharing some 5x7 proof prints tonight with another photographer to help me
decide on the final cut of prints for my show, he pointed out all of the
white specks especially in the deep black areas of some of the prints.

Flaked off areas. For this reason and what I state below, I am abandoning
the Entrada paper.

I have returned to Plan B of printing using a warm ABW setting and printing
on Innova F gloss.

As I stated in a previous post (where I asked why anyone still printed on
matte paper), my images on Innova F are so much better. We held up an
Entrada and a Innova F print of the same image to the wall and the Entrada
image all but faded away while the Innova F print practically jumped off of
the wall -- it has so much more depth and presense.

I thought that I had discounted my previous conclusion about Innova F being
that much better than Entrada (or other matte papers) but I have come full
circle again.

Prints on Innova F are so much better as to render matte paper prints so
much fire kindling.

I have one issue where some of the shadow areas in the Innova prints are a
bit blocked up but I think I can handle this by throttling back a bit on the
ink flow in the Epson driver.

Dave.

-- 
My Photography: http://www.david-keenan.com
My Blog: http://www.david-keenan.com/euroblog


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