Digital BW, The Print

Steve,

Picking up an old thread for some questions:

I'm seriously interested in the HP Z3100 and would like to use 
your B&W workflow with that machine. If possible with Qimage. 
I do expect more similarities between its Advanced B&W mode 
and that of the Epson K3's than that there are differences 
between the two. There's probably one advantage, the Z3100 
internal calibration works on the grey ink channels too and it 
takes only 10 minutes to get that done.

I'm correct on this ?: The QTR ICC profile to convert to is 
made with the 51 target on the neutral default settings in the 
ABW driver. You do a P2P in Photoshop on a greyscale ? or 
monochrome RGB image?. The file is then brought to the ABW 
driver and only the hue slider is shifted for the toning you 
wish.

My first question is how much the hue selection shifts the 
tonal curve. It all probably stays within a very small gamut 
but I'm curious whether it limits the degree of saturation 
possible. I'm no advocate for complexity but could there be a 
reason to use more targets printed each with different hue 
settings and use an average profile made from the three 
measurements instead of one from the neutral setting ? The 3 - 
4 hue settings selected halfway the maximum toning you would 
use in practice. And Green target excluded.

The next thing is: how well does the hue slider cope with 
color toning from paper color to carbon black ? Is there a 
shift in hue over that range for the cooler prints (which will 
be the most difficult on this issue) ? Of course you can 
select a paper that at least fits the cooler image better but 
that still leaves the warmer black ink to adapt to. I wonder 
whether Epson did compensate a bit of that in the ABW driver. 
As far as I know the Z3100 grey inks are more neutral than 
Epson's K3's but I have to ask that again.

I think Qimage allows the use of color management along with 
the Epson ABW driver. A monochrome RGB file then could get its 
P2P QTR profile right before the ABW driver and Photoshop 
isn't needed for the printing stage.


Met vriendelijke groeten,Ernst


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