Lab L quality with slider split toning
2015-02-13 by roark.paul@...
While having a warm and a neutral (or cool) profile, and using the sliders to obtain intermediate and split tones may seem ideal, my experience with the B&W inksets I've used is usually that the Lab L linearity suffered a bit from using the sliders. (I don't have much experience with OEM K3 inksets.)
Happily, it appears the toner approach I am now testing works extremely well with the sliders. Probably because the gray partition is identical for the two profiles, slider blends and split tones between the warm (100% carbon) and neutral versions of a profile for a paper keep the Lab L straight and stable.
See this example I just tested:
http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/EbVT-Split-Tone.JPG
I'm not accustomed to seeing such a good, straight Lab L curve with sliders. But maybe this has never been an issue for most who use QTR.
I'd guess K3 profiles might also have this type of result if the core gray curves stay identical between warm and neutral profiles for the same paper.
Many of the inksets that I have used have one set of warm 100% carbon and then a second set of cool blended inks in them. These two, in effect, inksets have their own partitioned profiles. However, since these are different inks, they have slightly different response curves that appeared to affect the Lab L lineariity when I have tried to blend the profiles.
Paul
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