Heh...I thought I was the only one who did stuff like that. ;-)
I'm actually able to get 31 (+ white) distinct steps with the KM73
plates using a custom screen. I should probably post a scan of a
printed step wedge to my procedure sometime to prove it to the
non-believers. More is likely possible, but it's tough to know when to
draw the line. 31 seems to get me pretty much where I want to be.
Oops. I thought that was off-list. Cryptic enough?
Thanks! I think that may be all I need to at least give it a shot. It
looks like the DR of the KM73 plate is 11 steps, or 11*.15=1.65. That
sounds consistent with what I was doing last summer in a traditional
copper gravure workshop I took with Jon Goodman. In that workshop, we
aimed for interpositives with highlights at 0.5 and shadows at 2.0 for a
nice complete full range etch. Do you like having some 'tooth' in your
highlights? That is one of the advantages we are finding for this
particular approach: you can easily create a curve that puts some ink and
texture even in the thinner areas of the inkjet transparency.
Just came across this archive of info on someone's website who was
studying Polymer Photogravure. It appears to be something of a combined
blog and archive, hence, blarchive. Didn't really examine the core
website too much, but this doc seems to be a nice smattering of people's
experiences with the KM73 plates, Solarplates, etc.
http://www.lillil.com/pdf%20files/lillil_polymer&photogravure.pdf