Digital BW, The Print

Martin Wesley recently suggested a simple device for producing neutral
BW prints from a set of colour inks. Perhaps derived from the referenced
article by Caponegro fils in which he apparently argued the use of
PShop levels, Martin suggested that one might begin with the blue and
red channels each set to 1.0.

This morning I fired up my Win98SE rig, profiled with Photocal and
ProfilerRGB, and driving an Epson 1160 using Jon Cone's Darngoodink. In
PShop 6.0, I opened a coloured image of ferns in the forest taken with a
Canon G1 digital camera. I used channel mixer, a couple of curves
adjustment layers, and the high pass sharpener, and only then adjusted
the gamma with layers as above. Printing on Epson Photo Paper (Yay
Costco! 28c Canadian per 8.5x11 sheet!) at about 6x8 in., I found the
print too red.  I returned to the snapshot I had made before tinting the
image in levels, and set red to 1.05 and blue to 1.12.

Now I've tried all the stunts -- Reichman's, Fraser's, and a hatful of
other helpful volunteers. None of them gave me a print anywhere near as
neutral as this one as it emerged from the gullet of the 1160. In
daylight it's just about perfect, and betrays only the slightest hint of
purple under tungsten: no more metamerism, in other words, than the
prints I toned in selenium many years ago. A fluke? Maybe. I'll let you
know. So far, pretty exciting. Thanks, Martin.
Bob Bollini