Digital BW, The Print

I'm trying to make very cold prints. I'd like to approach my selenium toned Ilford fiber wet prints.  I've tried Premier Art Smooth B&W paper with Paul Roark's Photoshop and QTR curves.  Is there a different paper / curve combination that would give an even colder tone?

Thanks and Happy New Year.

rfsteckmeyer <steckmeyer@...> wrote:

> **
>
>
> I'm trying to make very cold prints. I'd like to approach my selenium
> toned Ilford fiber wet prints. I've tried Premier Art Smooth B&W paper with
> Paul Roark's Photoshop and QTR curves. Is there a different paper / curve
> combination that would give an even colder tone?
>
>
> In my view, Premier Art Smooth BW makes the coolest looking 100% carbon
pigment prints. Some very bright paper will have colder highlights, but the
delta-Lab B -- the increase in warmth from the paper white to the maximum
Lab B -- will be much higher and give an appearance of more warmth.

To get a cooler image than the above and still have an Eboni carbon base,
take a look at http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/Eboni-4-Plus.pdf

In Eb4+ I've added 2 cool ink positions to the Eboni carbon.  I liked the
approach enough that I moved my 7800 to a similar setup for 2013 (
http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/7800-EbHP-2013.pdf)

For the 1400, MIS UT14 C and LC plug right in -- no mixing or even loading
of carts is needed.  For the best lightfastness, HP Z3200 PK pigments are
used.  For that you'll need to  do at least some cart loading.  HP makes an
LK equivalent ("gray") that can be used directly, or you can mix the LK by
diluting HP PK with generic base (make yourself or buy from MIS).

If you want cooler than this, there are the carbon core plus LM and LC
approaches, but they are a lot more work to profile.

For the best lightfastness for the coolness, just use HP Z3100/3200
pigments straight.  Actually, if you dilute from the HP PK, the cost of a
100% HP PK inkset is rather reasonable.

I think cooler than this starts to get into print tones that were never
part of our wet darkroom background.  On the other hand, the preferences of
people for cold prints is obvious from the popularity of the high OBA
papers.  I personally think people are viewing their prints next to 6500K
monitors and brightened copy paper -- a mistake in my opinion.  It's all
relative when it comes to the appearance of coolness.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com


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