RE: Generation Inks

[Dan Culbertson <danculb@concentric.net>]

I'll be trying the Generations inks -- I just placed an order for a batch.
I should be in a position to keep one 3000 loaded with MIS inks and one
loaded with Geberations inks for a while so, provided I have some time now
that my vacation is over, I should be able to run some direct comparisons
on a couple of papers.  MIS is gamut restricted on uncoated watercolor
papers (but then what isn't - except the Epson inks of course!).  But MIS
does well on coated papers gamut-wise.  On some coated papers it bleeds and
loses details in areas which use a lot of ink (say fully saturated greens
and reds).  It will be nice if the Generations inks can hold up to the
Epson ink's lack of bleeding and still maintain at least some depth of
color on watercolor papers.  We'll see.

Re the comment on lack of transparency -- that is partly why I decided to
try pigmented inks.  From what has been posted here on the list I've heard
that the reason the industry has settled on CMY as the colored inks
standard is that they are transmissive colors whereas RGB are considered
reflective colors. That sounds very likely true for process inks blends but
for some purposes an RGB inkset can be very nice.  I already ran a few
quick tests with blending MIS inks to get RGB and, though the gamut is
reduced (of course!), they do great Multitones so long as you keep the CMYK
channels partitioned and only use one ink blend (like "green" ink) with
black with maybe a slight touch of a second blend thrown in for
cross-tones.  You have to pretty much print in CMYK to do this since even
my faux CMYK/RGB(K) print process blends in a touch of the other inks so it
isn't optimal except for fairly neutral quadtone sets.  But with this type
of printing I wouldn't expect lack of transparency to be any issue at all.
It will be interesting to see if the standard way of using them (as CMYK
process colors) will also hold up to expectations.

Dan Culbertson

>I've been trying Generations and do not find that to be the
>case. I do need a bit more time with them before making
>definitive statements. Dan Culbertson works with MIS color inks
>(I think), I'd trust his judgement. C.D. Tobie has implied lees
>than satifactory results, but I think he was referring to glossy
>paper usage.
>Tyler
>
>
>Also, I have heard that pigmented inks do not have the
>transparency
>necessary for true photographic output. What is the experience
>on this score
>with Gener




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