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Ink density adjustment on 3800

PVia

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Hi all...

I'm about to dive in and I had read here about upping the ink density (5-10%) for negatives created with the Advanced B&W mode. However, I can't find the density adjustment in the driver, unless it's the Maximum Optical Density control that I see. That control is at 0 (all the way to the right) and you can only set it to "minus" values.

Are we talking about indeed setting it to minus values (ie -5%)?

Much thanks in advance...

Paul
 

Colin Graham

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Hi Paul and welcome.

I think maybe you can only bump that in color mode, at least in any intuitive way. For AB&W Ron Reeder has suggested cranking the yellow on the color wheel all the way up to 75 as it has good UV blocking properties and then adjusting the optical density slider as needed to get a clean white 0% step with your maximum black exposure time.

The article on that at his site-http://www.ronreeder.com/articles/Epson3800.pdf His QTR articles are very much worth looking into as well.
 

sanking

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Paul,

If you are using QTR the Ink Denity setting will come up under the Print Setting menu.

However, since you talk about the advanced B&W mode I assume you are using the 3800 with the Epson driver If so I am fairly sure that the setting to increase density is under paper configuration > color density, where you increase or decrease setting.

Sandy

 
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PVia

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Hi Colin and thanks...

Well, I was reading the "Epson 3800 Digital Neg Success" thread from a while back in which Kerik was having success in pure palladium with B&W RGB negatives, and no added color (he had subsequently dropped Clay's 004 green method) with 5% density. I wasn't sure if he was using AB&W or plain RGB printing, but I couldn't find a density control in plain RGB and surmised it was AB&W.

I haven't tried the various methods yet (arrays, pdn, chartthrob, etc) and wanted to get started on the right track.
 
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PVia

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Thanks Sandy...I'll look around for that.

Which digi-neg method did you finally settle with?

Up til now I've been making traditionally enlarged negatives and printing pure palladium with no contrast agent. Results have been smooth, but I do have some images that are tough to get a good result with. A digi-neg would be most helpful with them...

Paul
 

sanking

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I am using QTR but have not yet managed to make a perfect carbon profile, perhaps in part because every time I make a new batch of carbon tissue there are some changes. So basically what I do is use the existing QTR profile, and then develop a new .acv curve for each new tissue batch to fine-tune the tissue.

Sandy



 

Colin Graham

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Definitely check out QTR, it arguably has the most control. I ran into problems with the epson driver and any color negative method I tried for carbon and kallitypes. The UV blocking range of the inks was very thin making it hard to curve a full range of tones, and I'd also get some very non-linear gradations. With QTR you can control the light and dark inksets independently, and tailor them very well to your process.

Sandy, thanks, I'd totally forgotten about the paper config GUI.
 
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sanking

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Colin,

Same here in terms of the Epson drivers. I just could not get enough UV blocking with either composite black or advanced B&W, or any other color method. Best I could get was around log 2.20, which is much lower than I like for carbon printing where I am looking for a negative DR of about 2.7.

I never actually tried the +Density settings with the Epson driver since getting where I wanted to be was so far from where I was. QTR works much better for this.


Sandy King





 

Colin Graham

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Yes, QTR seems a great fit for carbon especially.

I do still try to make headway with color negs /advanced B&W occasionally because I like the dither pattern a little better with the epson driver in the highlights. I keep meaning to ask over on the quadtone group if there might be a way to use it from the QTR interface.
 

jag2x

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Sandy have you tried laying two digital neg transparency to get a higher dmax? Would this work?
 

donbga

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jag2x said:
Sandy have you tried laying two digital neg transparency to get a higher dmax? Would this work?
Click to expand...

You could do that if you could achieve perfect registraion.

You can conceptually do the same thing in Photoshop by adding a new adjustment Layer with the Mode set to Multiply.

You would need to work out the dyanmics of the new layer opacity but I think that would work. This would actually give you much more control over negative density than laying two negatives together.

Don Bryant
 
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