Digital BW, The Print

I would posit that the sort of control Tyler mentions in this post is where
the benefits of a RIP truly come into their own.  Some will have the time,
patience and expertise to pursue  this level of control and quality (and I
very much hope there is demand enough to keep them at it as they will be the
guys pushing the edge of the envelope enough for us to reap the benefits of
their innovation over time) ­ most of us will not have the time nor the will
to exert this sort of level of dedication.

I would argue, though, that using the Epson colour driver to print B&W is a
harsh comparison to this sort of refined quality.  Even using the Epson Adv
B&W driver standalone is a harsh comparison.  As you¹ve heard me argue
frequently in the past, there is a big hole in the Adv B&W architecture and
that is luminance management.  Fortunately that hole can be readily and
cheaply fixed by using the tweaked colour management techniques Roy has made
available to us all with QTR Create ICC.  In my opinion, this is critical to
getting a good B&W print out of current methods ­ RIP, Adv B&W or otherwise.
That¹s where the shadows and mid tones are dealt with.

From there one can debate the value of a fourth or more grey for improved
highlights.

Expert split toning and all sorts of fun lay beyond that with a B&W
RIP...and a lot of time.

Cheers

Steve

(PS:  I¹m afraid resorting to 6x lupes and  3000dpi scans is not the way to
sell the benefits of that invested time.)





From: Tyler Boley <tyler@...>
Reply-To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 03:56:25 -0000
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: K3 vs. quad

 
 
 

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com> , CorrPro96@...
wrote:
...
> Tyler's comments were to the effect that he used 5, 6 and I think 7 blacks
> with a variety of partitions
....

> I asked Tyler about his ink partitioning on this forum, but he didn't
> respond. Maybe it was Scotch after all. <g>

Richard, right now I think the Scotch is in order... unfortunately for me it
always leads to a 
second course.. excedrin...

They were all 4 partitions, but there were multiple inks often applied to
those partitions. 
Since the later Epsons have enough tanks to hold 2 quad inksets with a
shared K, I have 
the selenium set, and a modified WarmNeutral set installed, 7 inks. The RIP
lets you assign 
any tank to any quad partition (even QTR does this, I'm sure IJC and others
as well), so it's 
easy to do an all Selenium quad setup, and an all warm setup. But then many
others are 
possible when you let your brain loose. Warm/Selenium splits, assigning more
than one 
tank to a partition lets you do blends. So now you can do splits, blends,
any combination, 
any partition, or not, think of the possibilities. What Jon is doing with
Custom mono sets in
a 12 ink Roland for the Ashes and Snow prints makes this look like child's
play.
Any more info and I'll have to kill you.
I was after the different visual effects of subtle hue shifts, in different
directions, on the 
dimensionality of the visual image on paper. I don't know if anyone else
there had shifting 
hue examples so I can see how they may have looked different from the
others.
I single hue approach is obvioulsy beautiful too, I'm very drawn to it as
well and don't 
think it takes a second seat, I find it to be image dependant. I'm very
apreciative of the 
comments about these experiements and how they worked with Amadou's
photograph.
Again, these prints were not the same as the one I scanned for the test I
posted, it was a 
straight single set quad with the underprinted K.
Tyler

 
    



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