QTR-Quadtone RIP

Hi all,

I'm hoping that someone can provide an explanation of the following -
I accept that it may simply be something in my set up.

I have an Epson 1290 with UT2 inks installed. As such I'm happy with
the profiles that ship with QTR - I can fiddle later, for now I want
to thoroughly test the whole workflow and calibration set up.

To that end, I've printed several black and white A4s using both cool
and neutral curves for Epson Lustre Paper. No problem.

Having read most of the documentation I can find for QTR, I have
installed Roy's ICC gray profiles and find that when soft proofing in
photoshop I can get a really close match to the print (this might be a
bit back to front, I agree) if I set the proofing view to use the
profile for QTR-Gray Photo Paper and then set 'Preserve numbers' and
'simulate black ink'.

This setup correctly displays the way in which the print (and the now
altered screen image) seem to lose the real deep blacks. If I switch
the proofing off, more black tones are visible.

This isn't a problem insofar as what I can see on my monitor is pretty
close to the output from the RIP. However, if I print the same image
through Photoshop using the Paul Roark curves (which loses my soft
proofing), these same images contain these deep black tones which
appear to be lost in QTR.

I understand that matt papers have greater Dmax yes, but this is about
printing the same image on the same pearl (lustre) paper - with the
non RIP version producing better results. However, I'm both convinced
that QTR will give me the same if not better output than the curves,
plus I'd really like to keep my soft proofing capability.

Can anyone suggest where I might be going wrong?