Pictorico Ultra Premium OHP vs. White Film for Silver-Gelatin DN's

[Take2]

I've been playing around with DN's for some years now with marginal results. I have an Epson 3800 with K3 inks, mainly using the Photoshop curves method. Last spring I had some fairly promising results printing digital negatives on Inkpress White Film. Sadly I lost most of my configuration and curves so I'm back to the drawing board. The "paper guy" at B&H told me that OHP is the way to go for DN's. I've gone through about 10 step-tablet iterations or so and I'm at the "tweaking stage" (well within 10% of linear tones) but the prints look like crap! I'm wondering if OHP is no good for SG (all the talk is about platinum/palladium & OHP). Any insights would be helpful.

I'm linearizing my tones using a densitometer.

 

[pschwart]

the prints look like crap!

You need to be more specific.

 

[Take2]

Like I said, the tablet tonal scale is mostly linear (within 10%) but the tones in the image appear blotchy and uneven (see attached).

Given the relatively scarcity of [concise and usable] information out there on digital negatives, I'm not holding out much hope for troubleshoot this issue. I'm gonna go back to known quantities, and re-do the curve for Pictorico White Film. I remember seeing curves for this medium on Dan Burkholder's site for use with silver gelatin.

 

[pschwart]

It would be helpful to see the positive digital image so we can better evaluate the negative, but this doesn't look like a curve problem -- more like a reflection or uneven lighting across the negative. The negative is out of focus at the hairline above the right eye, so I suspect the negative popped and that is part of the problem.
What exactly is the Photoshop curves method? I don't know of any method that doesn't need a correction curve, and these are often made using Photoshop. Are you making colorized negatives using the Epson driver? Black & white negatives using Epson ABW? Are you using matte black (MK) or photo black (PK)?