need for variety of ink tones

[Paul W.]

I recently bought a Canon iP8720 and have made some very satisfying b/w prints. I'm using EZink cartridges because that's what the printer came with. For the present, am using Epson Premium Presentation Paper Matt and Red River Aurora Art Natural. Both papers are 2 sided. The Epson paper is very white, probably contains OBA's and the RR paper has no OBA's and is in a slightly toned natural color.

The Epson print is stunning in detail and tones - the ads are accurate. However the print is almost too striking, the black is slightly blueish. The Red River has what you'd expect in a natural tone and the subject, a log barn, takes on a pronounced tan.

I got spoiled using QTRip, there are two channels as many of you know. My typical configuration was 90-95% neutral black dilution in one channel and 5-10% warm in the other channel (don't quote me on these percentages - it's been a while!). I could obtain quite a variety of tones by varying the percentages in the channels. My question is wondering if there's some way to vary the warm and cold with my current ink/paper materials.

Thanks all!

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

If you are that much into B/W printing it may be of help for you to get a spectrometer and measure the various black levels depending on your mix of inks, and this would give you the chance to print the same black tones on different types of papers. Optical brighteners are not effective at the dark end, the ink covers up the coating and the embedded fluorescent ink , but you are right to mention that different papers give a distinct and different color to black parts of an image .

 

[Paul W.]

Actually it turns out that I do have a spectrometer, it's the previous version of Spyder. A friend of mine gave it to me, he was on a current version. But I confess that I haven't figured out how to use it. Think this would work for me?

I'm into simplicity as much as possible. I like the EZink black, if I could just warm it up I'd go that route. I had a cordial exchange with Jon Cone, he'll mix up an ink for me. He knew I was satisfied with Paul Roark's variable mixture, and Jon's custom mix was rather expensive. I told Jon my favorite darkroom paper was an Agfa and he knew right away which digital mix would be a good match.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

The Datacolor spyder is a colorimeter, not a spectrometer, and I'm not sure if you would be able to do spot reading with theSpyder software, and ArgyllCMS most likely would not ssupport it but I'm not familiar with ArgyllCMS to that extend. ArgyllCMS would support the ColorMunki by X-Rite to my knowledge but other users more familiar could be of help in that case.

 

[Paul W.]

Looks we have a case of crossed messages - but it turns out to be timely!

Does anyone have a paper/ink combination that works for them? It would be a black without the blue. Not crazy about excess red either.