I was surprised at how well Sandy's straight line profile worked for the OEM inkset and digital alt process negatives. It was not only very good, but it also was simple enough to get my friend over the QTR learning curve hump. There is a point where the net benefits of the program become apparent and then following your own path down the learning curve is self sustaining. Keeping things as simple as possible, particularly in the beginning, and following a known master of the art (including Sandy for alt process work) has clear benefits for those who are new to QTR or any process.
I agree that with respect to my positive (i.e., not internegative) inkjet printing I favor a good partition of dilute inks, but the transmission density of the dilute inks for negatives is very low. Looking at the platinum prints that were made with the straight line profiles (Sandy's, but for OEM only PK and Y are used) and my partitioned profile, I saw no quality advantage to the partitioned profile. That would not be the case with normal inkjet printing.
Thus, my initial assumption was that this was for alt process internegatives. If that is not the case, then go with standard partitioning.
I was also not sure exactly which workflow or profile the OP was referring to. Thus I included a link to one of Sandy's posts that had a full description of a profile.
Following the path of people who've made and posted profiles makes a lot of sense for many if not most people.
FWIW
Paul
On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 3:09 PM, richard@... [QuadtoneRIP] <QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
To answer the original question first, it doesn't matter so much what order you put them in because the RGB values in the ink calibration image control which strip is printed where on the page. It might be worth while noticing what the color pair are and not have each shade so close together. I had problems with the 1430 where the yellow mixed with the black channel, and it was very easy to see where the problem was. If your shades are physically too close together in the print head you might not be able to see those kinds of problems as easily and end up going around in circles tracking down the problem. Take a look at the Piezography ink positioning. I have never talked to Jon about why they are in that order, but there must be a reason for it.
About how to dilute/control the inks: Maybe i don't completely understand Sandy's method, but I disagree with Paul and what was linked to in his post. This is similar to my argument against a 3MK approach with positive prints on paper. Eventhough the dots are small, and even when they are in three or 8 channels, there is still excessive dithering of the full strength inks. I maintain that it is better to use overlapping partitions of different dilutions—whether they are inks on paper or film for darkroom processes.In talking with Sandy privately he explained how he was making custom dilutions of the three standard Epson PK, LK, LLK inks and creating an 8 ink partitioned profile. I helped another person earlier last year with a similar kind of set up using the Piezography inks (pre-piezoDN) using a manual approach to setting the limits and cross overs. I will be extending those manual tools into a digital negative version of my profiling system for simple/automated partitioning off of measurements of the printed ink calibration images. That would make this process easier no matter how many inks or what dilutions you want to use. They could be custom dilutions of the Epson inks, the old mixtures of the Peizography digital film inks, or their new stuff (i tested Eboni inks for digital negatives and it wasn't worth the trouble). Again, this is not meant to just be a plug for my own stuff, but is more of a comment on the kind of thing you can do when you get into some of the more powerful and customizable features of QTR, and to why I advocate for overlapping serial partitions like QTR can make.