Digital BW, The Print

Thank you Paul Roark and David Goldenberg. Using your comments I built a modified curve that seems to work very well. The curve is essentially Paul's curve UT14-Gloss-N-4 with a couple of tweaks in the red and green curves. This worked well except that the black was not as black as I would like in appearance and rated only in the high eighties in a scanned step wedge. 

Having had little luck with the icc generation for this, I decided to play around with the curves and see if I could brute-force fix it. It was actually pretty easy. By going into the blue curve I was able to add just a little Eboni black to the image without creating any surface problems. The blue curve runs from the upper right corner, across 25% to the left, then down 25% at an angle to the left side. This darkens the mid tones slightly and the deepest blacks just enough. 

The result is a neutral-toned image with deep blacks and a good ramp of grays. 

Printer: Epson 1400

Ink: MIS UT14-Full Set with Eboni

Paper: Red River Arctic Polar Gloss 

Adjustment Curve: RRAPG_neutral.acv

Although I did not do any step-wedge measurements, test prints showed that the curve works equally well on Red River Polar Pearl Metallic and UltraPro Satin papers, though both of these papers have a less bright white coloration than the Arctic Polar Gloss paper. UT14 with MIS color ink black in place of Eboni on Polar Pearl Metallic is another combination that looks good – initially. After six months, all the dark blacks turned red. I'll leave a copy of the full UT14/PPM image in a widow for a while and see how it does. 

I posted the curve and the instructions to use it on my Skydrive public page: https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=6CF998413A2B7D24!336&authkey=!AGDwI5Bc6QZ7iY8