Proofing duotone/tritone/quadtone

[nemophoto]

I may have a project that will require duo-, tri-, or quadtone B&W images, I've been trying to figure out whether I can accurately proof these on my Canon iPF6100 without a postscript RIP. Granted, this is tough given the fact that the duotones, et al, are a combination of PMS warm or cool grays and blacks.

Anyone have success? Thanks.

Nemo

[Geoff Wittig]

I may have a project that will require duo-, tri-, or quadtone B&W images, I've been trying to figure out whether I can accurately proof these on my Canon iPF6100 without a postscript RIP. Granted, this is tough given the fact that the duotones, et al, are a combination of PMS warm or cool grays and blacks.

Anyone have success? Thanks.

Nemo

You can always emulate duotone/tritone/quadtone printing using Photoshop's duotone feature, but your iPF6100 will just be using its own inkset to emulate the tones you'd get with actual multi-pass offset printing.

[nemophoto]

I did some experimentation with a quadtone curve I set up myself, versus and RGB versus a grayscale, all sent to the Canon iPF6100. The first thing that was immediately apparent was that one cannot use the plugin for Photoshop for the printer, when printing the quadtone. You have to use the driver. That said, the results were indeed very close to what appears on the monitor. The other apparent gain is added gradation of the highlight tones, versus RGB image, and slightly more versus grayscale. Interestingly, the highlight tones were slightly "brighter in grayscale, but as expected, the tonal range is expanded in the quadtone.

So, quadtone can be proofed fairly accurately from Photoshop. And it might actually be a better way to print B&W images from Photoshop (versus sending as RGB or grayscale). My proofing was relatively quick and limited. I printed on Museo Portfolio Rag, which has become on of my favorite matte papers -- tremendous Dmax, smooth and good tonal range. (My favorite semi-gloss is still Silver Rag after trying every fiber-based "photo glossy" paper on the market.)

Nemo