RE: Digital Negs - breaking the rules

Carlos I don't have experience with Epson Ultrachrome inks but... Once,
I was using Piezography quadtone carbon pigment inks (Selenium tone,
Museum Black) for making enlarged negatives. These inks were performing
bad on Pictorico (easily smear, can transfer to the print, couldn't
print from the same negative most times...). Then I switched to
Photowarehouse Ultrafine Crystal Clear Transparencies (thanks again
Christina)... Piezography inks were almost bulletproof on that
substrate.

Maybe you can ask list members if Ultrachromes perform similarly on
Ultrafine. If someone can confirm that Ultrachrome inkset gets along
well with Ultrafine, then you can try some sheets of it... (But
Ultrafine has its own problems; such as being too thin - feeding
problems(?) - and causing venetian blinds effect - something related to
being thin and/or coating incosistencies(?).

Regards,
Loris.

-----Original Message-----
From: Carlos Gasparinho [mailto:gasparinho@mac.com]
Sent: 17 Şubat 2006 Cuma 13:39
To: alt-photo-process-L@usask.ca
Subject: Digital Negs - breaking the rules

Good day to everyone from the west corner of Europe,

I will start next week new tests to produce digital negs for
Platinum/palladium print and kallitype printing.

The difference is that I do not want to exchange the matte black I use
for everything else for the photo black. And the matte black has a
tendency to run on the OHP Pictorico.

Equipment + material + software I will be using

Flextight 848 scanner
PowerMac G5
Epson 7800
Epson 9600
Pictorico OHP
Adobe Photoshop CS2
ImagePrint 6 (RIP software by ColorByte)

ColorByte now has profiles that allow for the use of Matte black and
Photo Black on the 7800 printer. They call it Phatte Black, and the idea
is to replace the light-light black cartridge by the matte black (we
need also to replace the chip on the cartrigde). This would make things
much easier. Still I do not agree with them when they say that there is
no difference in quality, as I believe that the new light-light black
color makes a difference when printing both in color and B/W.

So I am back to square one. I want to keep the Matte black in the
printer.

My idea is to print chromogenic negatives, limiting or eliminating the
use of matte black. Because the 7800 uses two more blacks, light and
light-light and their drying characteristics similar to the photo black,
I believe that by increasing the levels of these two inks, acceptable
results may be achieved.

The Image Print software has an ink limit feature that I am planning to
use for this.

Before I start throwing money out of the window, has anyone already done
some research along these lines?

All help will be appreciated.

Carlos Gasparinho
Received on Fri Feb 17 06:05:46 2006