on 1/11/04 5:45 pm, Graeme Bulcraig wrote: > Do 'old school' printers have trouble printing a full range of black? > and if so are eci trying to push people to sort this out....Does a full > range of black produce a more neutral print?
Yes, no and yes. An old school printer will be tempted turn the black ink dial to 11 (in a Spinal Tap kind of way) to ensure that type is nice and dense and that neutrals stay neutral. Unfortunately this means that anything in the 80-90 per cent K range ends up solid and 100 per cent ends up with a slick of ink on the paper. Black ink is obviously more neutral. So you're doing the printer a big favour if the neutral tones of an image are composed mostly of black ink. They can then run the presses without any form of colour management without you noticing :-) I doubt that that there will be any *push* to help you here. The profiles were created by professionals who take great pride in process control and colour management. The people who buy the presses don't often share the same priorities! It's a bit like expecting to find Ansel Adams running your local mini-lab. Your best option would be having the printer supply a professionally produced press profile - but that's very likely to happen. Alternatively, I guess that you could get somebody with the requisite software to edit the profile that is *nearly* right to adjust the black width and length. But you *really* need to ask yourself if it's worth taking responsibility for this kind of thing? The printer will always err to using more black - it's cheap and it's neutral. And if your shadow detail turns to s**t they'll blame your separation... If they don't like the profile get them to supply their own. -- Martin Orpen Idea Digital Imaging Ltd -- The Image Specialists http://www.idea-digital.com =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
