Digital BW, The Print

Jerry,


>I've done a dip 'n dunk test of 4 black inks. ...
> can you mix them for color prints too,
>without screwing up a color profile?

The black ink affects (approximately) the lower half of the tonal scale.
With quads, the different blacks mostly affect the separation of the tones
from about 65% to 100%, with the changes being more noticeable as you
approach 100%.

>Of the blacks, I've found they rate like this:
>Do you feel this is accurate?

>I believe Lyson has the deepest black, but those inks
>are not compatible with what most on this group are using.

>Blackest of all :  Beta/Enhanced Black, from Generations.

It's the darkest of the "pigmented" inks I've used.  However, I beleive the
darkness comes from having more black dye in it.  In the variable-tone
inkset testing, I found it caused metamerism, in addition to fading and
color shifting more than the others (MIS and Piezo).

>Piezo Black Ink, appears the lightest of the blacks,
>but it is still quite black.

The black ink for the Piezo COLOR inkset is light.  The Piezo quad black,
however, is very good and appears to be the same as the MIS VM quad black.
It is darker than the standard MIS black.  MIS VM black/Piezo quad black are
at the top of my list of blacks.

>...I just can't understand why [Cone] chose to use such a light
>black {in the color inkset] unless it was to eliminate metamerism.

That is the rumor I've heard.  However, I've not heard people complain about
metamerism in MIS or Generations pigments unless they try to use them for
B&W printing.  The Epson 2000P pigments are the ones that drive printers
crazy with the metamerism.

Paul