Making digital prints look like film prints

[MfAlab]

I think we must make things clear, paper look and feel, tone transition(density curve), granularity(fine or coarse grain), tone neutrality(gray shift), resolution(details), they have different meaning and causes. K7 inks, or other ink set has more than 3 gray, mainly has benefit of granularity and detail. Neutrality is not a K7 specialty. K6/K7 ink set have no color inks, means you don't have much control on gray shift after chosen ink/paper combination. Other ink, like HP Vivera, may have a much neutral gray inks than K7, and have CMY inks to neutralize gray shift. That's why Piezography made PRO ink, a duo tone K4 ink system.

Regular K3 ink can still get good density curve and tone neutrality under careful control whether using drivers or RIPs. Because my job, I'd tested some RIPs, e.g., ErgoSoft, GMG, EFI Fiery, Onyx RIPs, now mainly use Caldera and barbieri's spectrometer. Caldera has best dark/light (C/LC, M/LM, K/LK) ink transition function. It actually print, measure and calculate an adjustable customize transition curve. For tone neutrality, GMG and EFI has best performance. Both two RIPs support G7 greyscale linearization and repeated calibration function.

We can use RIPs to improve resolution and granularity, that's for sure. Better ripping, dither, and light/dark ink transition can increase quality, but we cannot break the physical limit. Half tone printing is basically using AM/FM method to generate tone value. Lighter tone means less ink dots and coverage, cause coarse grain and low resolution. K3 inks by Epson, Canon and HP limit noticeable range around 0~30%. It's good enough for most user. K7 is a step forward on it.

[DavidPalermo]

So some of you have mentioned that a well-calibrated system (Monitor, Printer, paper profiles) can produce a neutral gray scale (BW print). I am looking into this and found a product made by x-rite. The X-Rite i1Studio. It's about $500. Is it something worth considering for calibrating for BW (and color)?

I am getting pretty good results as it is but am always looking for something better if possible!

Thanks!

David

[Ernst Dinkla]

>Quote from: deanwork ... "They have a new pure carbon that is not as warm ..."

That would be interesting, if true. 

The appeal of the original MIS Eboni was that it was a pure carbon ink that, particularly in older printers with larger dots, was actually neutral.  It didn't last, however, due to modern printers' smaller dots causing more warmth.  [The reason for this is that as the dot or particle size increases there is more edge relative to area of dot or particle, and it is the edges of the dots/particles that cause the warmth.  Pi D (circumference) increases less than Pi R squared (area) as the dot size increases].  It turns out the neutrality advantage of old Eboni was probably caused by less effective dispersants that caused the ink to have more agglomerated particles which, in effect, increased the average particle sizes.

So far, every "carbon" ink I've tested that is claimed to be neutral has been spiked with color pigs. 

My approach to be best archival neutral print has been to use the best color pigments to pull the naturally warm carbon to neutral.  Sadly, there is no good blue, single-pigment carbon color offset available to us.  (I found a Daniel Smith pigment that did it, but it was not prepared for inkjets, and I don't have the scale to do that, nor did MIS Associates when I suggested it to them.)  So, we have to use a combination of cyan and magenta, or, better, cyan and blue (smaller hue angle).  My current formula uses Canon Lucia pigments to do this.f (See p. 2 of https://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/7800-Glossy-Carbon-Variable-Tone-2016.pdf, bottom of the page for the formula.)  (Beware that the new Canon "pro" pigs appear to be less lightfast than their older ones, which are still available.)  Note that finding color pigments that have the same fade rate (or close) is needed to avoid a drift into a greenish hue as the magenta used in most (or all) formulas fades faster than the naturally tougher cyan. 

We really need a truly neutral, carbon-tough pigment, but so far, I have not found one.  HP makes a very nice, neutral ink, but it is not in the pure carbon fade rate class.  I assume Epson has made the best LK and LLK it can, but they appear to me to be, in effect, carbon plus cyan.  They are not neutral.

So, my hat's off to anyone who comes up with a truly neutral, pure carbon grade, inkjet compatible pigment.  I suspect it'll take some heavy duty chemistry, and if accomplish, we'll see some believable, third party test results to verify the claims.

FWIW,

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com

Paul,

The HP Z3200 Vivera MK pigment ink is not neutral, the PK and Grey inks are neutral though.

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
March 2017 update, 750+ inkjet media white spectral plots

[Paul_Roark]

The HP Z3200 Vivera MK pigment ink is not neutral, the PK and Grey inks are neutral though.
...

Yes, I've noticed the HP PK and Grays all seem to be a bit different.  I assumed HP had put in more cooling color as the ink density decreased, with the goal of keeping their pure gray channel relatively neutral across the scale, from paper white to 100% black.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com

[deanwork]

That’s right. My Vivera Pk prints on Platine are run with no color channels for a great neutral, actually the best I’ve seen in inkjet prints without running color composites like Epson inks and qtr. I do a lot of this Vivera / Platine combination.

Using Canson Rag Photo with MK the prints are a little cool and end up adding a tiny bit of yellow and red, comes to about one point each to neutralize. Same with photorag, etc.  if you print straight Vivera grays on a warm matte paper you can see a nice warm/cool split, but very subtle.

John

Paul,

The HP Z3200 Vivera MK pigment ink is not neutral, the PK and Grey inks are neutral though.

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
March 2017 update, 750+ inkjet media white spectral plots

[MfAlab]

I am looking into this and found a product made by x-rite. The X-Rite i1Studio. It's about $500. Is it something worth considering for calibrating for BW (and color)?

i1Photo Pro 2 or i1Photo Pro 3 Plus will be better if that is under your budget.