kirk_thompson

But it's complicated to log onto it! They didn't just use a list of their former group

members; you have to sign up all over again with your order number.

Really there's not much of a problem here - Hahnemuhle & Moab both make great fine-art

papers in 17x22" sheet sizes. As someone mentioned above, Moab Entrada Natural's

paper base is the same color as Ultrasmooth's - no brighteners, hence greater longevity.

Hahnemuhle Photo Rag has been an artists' favorite for years. And Moab Bright White,

with lots of brighteners, looks like Enhanced Matte but with a heavier & higher quality

paper base.

The nice thing about the Moab papers is that they're coated on both sides, & save you a lot

of money: your less-than-perfect prints can be recycled as work-print paper.

Cathy's Profiles is a good source; Dry Creek Photo is only a little more expensive & (in my

experience) better at fine-tuning.

My only gripe about 17x22 paper is that it's so short! I wish it corresponded to full-frame

proportions & was 17x26!

As to the idea: Gains would accrue mainly with high output, since the cost in 220 ml tanks

is already favorable. You have to buy the ink-feed system & make or buy new profiles.

Not too attractive an idea for most of us, but perhaps you have a large studio or a high-

volume project?

They do make a double-sided version, 196 Duo, which is good - & in effect 1/2-priced -

for making work-prints. But the 308 is one-sided.

I beg to differ from the folks who say you'll get good BW prints from the 4000 without a

RIP. With a custom profile you can get neutral tones under a 5000K viewing light, but

with any other light source the metamerism problem is serious. If you've been using a

piezo system you're bound to be disappointed.

You can do better with the Atkinson profiles for the 7600, but you'll still experience some

metamerism.

ImagePrint is the best answer for BW inkjet printing, but is pretty expensive for the larger

printers.

I've been getting by with the Harrington QTR, which works quite well with the 4000.

In contrast, the QTR doesn't work as well with the 2200. I've seen consistently reddish

shadows & bluish highlights, with 2 different 2200s. You'd have to work on some custom

curves. But it does work well 'out of the box' with the 4000, & tones are very consistent

across the grayscale. By blending the Cool & Warm tone curves (50/50 or 60/40) and

printing on a creamy paper like Ultrasmooth or Entrada Natural, you can come pretty close

to the paper base & image tones of selenium-toned Portriga Rapid, the classic warm-

toned darkroom paper.

Relative Colorimetric Intent usually helps. Ethan Hansen has mentioned - perhaps on this

forum? - that this is something he's tried to fix or improve, in making his custom profiles.

Wrong wavelength - Jack is broadcasting on the PRINTING channel (he put it

in caps), & you just aren't listening to that one. A 'test' with an image with no

edges has no bearing on the question of how to avoid sharpening artifacts

when res-ing up for printing. You need a test in which PRINTS look same/

better/worse.

But please let's just leave it there.

I don't think the case for Jack's method depends on the math as much as on looking at

one's own prints.

In my case, at least, I arrive at an acceptable level of sharpening with fewer halos if I apply

some "capture sharpening" In addition to "output sharpening." I use the PhotoKit Capture

Sharpeners (at reduced opacities) rather than Jack's method, but I'm sure the evidence for

(or against) earlier sharpening is visible, not theoretical.

I've said "one's own prints" and "in my case" because (as Andrew Rodney pointed out a

while back on this forum) the results of different methods of resing up and of methods/

amounts of sharpening interact; and assumptions about print-viewing distance &

preferences as to how much sharpening is desirable are going to vary considerably from

person to person or job to job. We're dealing with a bundle of interacting judgments that

apply to our own output, not across-the-board.

I'm also puzzled by the objection that one doesn't usually know what the final size &

resolution might be. Isn't the opposite most often the case? Whether you're working on

an artist's portfolio or a job for a client, don't you ordinarily know the size-resolution

parameters?

Andrew is certainly right - EZColor is up past its bedtime. You'd be wiser to spend the

money on a custom profile made with a more competent measuring device.

The simplest way to straighten out your problems is to go to Ian Lyons'

website, www.computer-darkroom.com, & then print out & follow carefully his

tutorials on color management & on setting up the 2100/2200 printers. It

would be nice to learn more from Harald Johnson, etc., but these tutorials will

show you everything you need to run your 2200.

Your only problem will be to account for any differences between your older

version of PS & the new one he uses in the illustrations. The principles are

the same, but the screens may look different.

Addendum to Glen's answer: Are you sure you want the bundled version? EZColor is

scanner-based & isn't (IMO) a 'competent' printer profiler.

Yes, Light Impressions or Lumiere. But I'm not sure you need non-buffered for inkjet

prints - I believe it's wet-darkroom color prints that interact with the buffered ones.

I convert to 8 bit before making final Adjustment Layers. Maybe I'm a bit of a slob about

all this, but I don't think so. Of course I save the RAW/NEF file intact. After RAW

conversion I do Levels, Curves, & HS Adjustment Layers & PhotoKit Capture sharpening &

have what looks on the screen like a good image. It's usually around a GB. I make a

work-print from this to be sure I'm pretty close to a final result. If it's indeed close, I

flatten the image & save it as 16 bit; then convert a copy to an 8 bit file for printing & do

smaller or more local changes in Adjustment Layers on that file. When I print on another

paper with another profile, I always make more small changes as 8 bit Adjustment Layers.

This way/workflow seems to preserve most of the data & keep the files manageably small.

In the instances where I've had to go back to the Raw file & start over in 16 bit, I've seen

no noticeable loss of tonal subtlety between the two prints.

Perhaps the reason this works OK for me is that whenever possible I convert Curves

Adjustment Layers to Luminosity Blending Mode. This prevents the major color distortions

that can appear when working with 8 bit Curves.

Excuse me for not replying sooner. Google the ImagePrint site, go to the features page, &

you'll find this sentence at the bottom:

"B/W dark room effects and shadow point adjustment available with Epson Ultrachrome

ink set only."

In other words, ImagaePrint doesn't contain full features for BW printing with the 1270/

80/90's dye inks.

You didn't say how you were opening them - As Shot, etc.. But generally they do look flat,

& you have a full array of processing options to take it from there.

You can save the settings you generally like as a new option or default. Or if you tweak

one in a series of shots, you can apply those settings to the subsequent files in the series.

Best advice: Bruce Fraser's book on Camera RAW.

Yes, but note that ImagePrint for the 1270 doesn't have the top-notch BW features that

you'd get with ImagePrint for a 2200.

The names of the Niks are confusing. You can get a Sharpener Pro Inkjet version for photo

printing, not to be confused with the Home Edition.

I use the Nik but wouldn't recommend paying so much for it, given the price of the

competition. I use the PhotoKit Sharpener for Capture sharpening & the Nik for Output

sharpening, just because I'm used to it - I like the print size/viewing distance settings of

the Nik & know just what they'll do. But if I were buying one program now, I'd say the PK

Sharpener is everything you need. Just be aware that the PK Sharpener 'oversteers' - that

is, you'll have to turn down the opacity rather consistently to keep your prints from

looking too crunchy & artificial (our eyes are still attuned to the sharpness of prints made

with film grain & enlarger lenses). With ACR &/or scanner set for No Sharpening, I find

that 50-60% opacity is plenty for D100 RAW-file Capture sharpening, & usually only half

that for high-res scans.

Ethan is right the & Solux Task Lamp ($140, I think) is the quality-on-a-budget answer -

but they apparently had some business changes or problems & haven't had any to ship for

several months.

'Reveal' & other screw-in bulbs will cause you to make pretty big errors. And Verilux

lamps (widely advertised in magazines as full-spectrum) are too blue (6300 or 6500K).

You can get Solux bulbs pretty cheaply in 5000K & other color temperatures (google

Tailored Lighting) & put them in another lamp, but they have a base that's not very easy to

match.

For the person (above) who feared that his print clients wouldn't have 'ideal' light: Galleries

seem to have changed from 2700K to 5000K track lights. If you want to allow for some

incandescent light in the room, maybe get the 4700K Solux instead. But remember that

your/their eyes will adjust to room light. All of the published materials that you see - your

magazines & photo & coffee-table books - were 'normed' by their printers to 5000K.

(1) & (2) are a really good combination - the former is a workbook, the latter a kind of

encyclopaedia.

Hi, Sean - I'll read the article carefully; I'd take Emily Dickinson's advice on anything

petaining to perception!

So when a specific color is desaturated in a masked area, the relative strength of the

complementary color increases (in that area); & this creates greater sharpness - or at least

the illusion thereof?

(I should admit that I'm suffering from terrible Red-Envy this week. I went to SF MOMA for

another look at the Eggleston exhibit. The primary colors of his dye transfer prints are a

lost art! (A museum docent told me that dye transfer printing halted not from disuse in

the Type C era, but from dangerous toxicity in manufacturing the chemistry.) I've greatly

enjoyed, even sort of idolized, his work in books, but CMYK reproduction hasn't done

much justice to the original colors.)

My subjects - & prints - tend to have few out-of-gamut colors, but today I'm making a

print with some bright reds & am experimenting with different ways of dealing with

clipped/out-of-gamut colors. I'm surprised that my library of PS books says little about

this, & I've also been surprised at what different results I got in 4 different print-

experiments.

(1) The simplest option seemed to be to use Perceptual Rendering Intent, & let the

algorithms take care of the problem. But this resulted in very poor modulation of the red

tones - they looked 'squished' onto the paper. (2) I also tried Relative colorimetric, & was

surprised that the red tones were more varied & better-distributed than with Perceptual.

My books had suggested the opposite - that RC is best for images with all the colors in-

gamut, & Perceptual is generally better for images with out-of-gamut colors.

(3-4) The next thing I did was to Color-Select the reds & desaturate them until the grey

gamut warnings went away. This produced better results with both Perceptual & Relative

Colorimetric Intents. Relative Colorimetric offered much better modulation of the red

tones.

What surprised me most was that the sharpness - not just the tonality - in the red areas

varied so much in the four different prints. The ones that I'd desaturated were noticeably

more detailed in the reds, & the desaturated Relative Colorimetric one looked sharpest of

all.

I wonder if this is always the case - is it always or generally best to deal with out-of-

gamut colors by desaturating the specific color(s) & using RC Intent? Are there other ways

of dealing with clipped colors that I should have tried?

Another strand of thought: I also wonder if definition within color-areas also varies with

the printer profile one uses. I've noticed that Nikon/Epson greens, even when in-gamut,

sometimes go all mushy with Perceptual intent, & look better with Relative Colorimetric;

but this seems to vary somewhat with what profile I use. In particular, I've tried some

relatively inexpensive custom printer profiles that seem to mess up in this area. (I noticed

somewhere on the web that Ethan Hansen had advice about this, but don't remember it

well - so maybe I'd just better get some of his profiles!)

Does anyone have experience/advice to compare on these issues?

(If it matters: Epson 4000, matte papers - EM for workprints, HPR & Entrada for final

ones.)

I use a LaCie 19", & IMO your choice of monitor size depends on your work habits. Folks

working on web stuff & those who want to get one-off results in printing tend to like a

bigger monitor; those of us who prefer to make a series of workprints are happy with a

smaller one. IMO, working with the best-calibrated monitor's transmitted light isn't the

same as looking at a print's reflected light; & so while I calibrate carefully & frequently (I1),

I'm not so deeply screen-dependent.

Choose a monitor to match your own way of working!

The LaCie has a nice hood, & when I got mine LaCie was offering free shipping, so the

price was the same. I liked getting it directly from the company.

Mine is just over 3 years old now, when they're supposed to drop in luminance - but when

I calibrate it, its luminance is still just fine.

Look carefully at the MIS website. The page you linked appears on their site, as a bargain

price on 'generic' inks. But the regular/'non-generic' MIS cartridges, the ones that have a

strong reputation, are on another page & cost $20 or so.

I too am a PhotoKit Sharpener addict, but while it's IMO the best way, it's certainly not the

easiest. It's complicated because you do both Capture & Output sharpening (with an

intermediate "creative" step if you want). And if you work in 16-bit, you get humungous

files that you have to take steps to boil down.

The Capture sharpening feature considerably reduces visible sharpening artifacts in the

final print. I personally find the default settings way too 'crunchy.' With D100 files & no

sharpening in ACR, I get the best results for Capture sharpening with Opacity reduced to

about 50-60%. (With 35mm scans even lower, 25-33%). Then you still have to do Output

sharpening before printing (with same caveat re: opacity).

If you're definitely looking for the easy way, you might try the Nik Sharpener: good results,

especially in manual mode.