Having seen your gums I agree about "gee". Nothing *could* improve them. I think
the answer to the question of layers is that no matter how perfect your
seperation negatives, and no matterhow close you are to ASTM CMYK colors,
the correct hue and saturation still dependson the relative strengths of the
layers. Since this is impossible to mix you may have to correct and correct
with additional layers, hopefully converging on your goal. If you are not
particular about color balance and just want
something pleasant looking then less layers will work.
AL