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February 2006

#26: Density is king

by JimRaffel on February 28, 2006

Part 4: TVI is not measured it is calculated from density which is king. All the other values our modern densitometers display are simply calculated values from the densities the instrument measures. In short, all a densitometer does is transmit a predetermined amount of light and then measure how much comes back to the instrument. This is done through Red, Green and Blue filters so the instrument can tell if the light was stopped by Cyan, Magenta, or Yellow ink.

One reader made a comment at JimRaffel.com that density is also a good indicator of ink film thickness on a printing press. Just remember that two inks with different pigment loads can record the same density and have different ink film thickness.

Coming next…Part 5 Measuring TVI of Inkjet proofs in meaningless

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#25 TVI Notebook (part 3 of 5) TVI is not a bad thing

by JimRaffel on February 21, 2006

Part 3: TVI in and of itself is not a bad thing: Back when TVI was called Dot Gain, I remember going into print shops and having pressman tell me “No, we don’t have any dot gain.” This was not ignorance (they knew they did), but instead a misconceived notion that TVI was a bad thing. I always countered this by saying that Dot Gain is not bad; however, NOT knowing what you Dot Gain is, is a bad thing. Think of it as trying to get from one city to another in a car without a map. We need to know where we are in order to get where we are going.

Coming next…Part 4. Density is king

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TVI Notebook (part 2 of 5) GRACoL & TVI

February 14, 2006

Part 2: GRACoL 7 appears to be taking our pressrooms in a direction where TVI will be significantly less importance in monitoring production run stability. Instead GRACoL 7 is based on maintaining gray balance utilizing density and L*a*b* values. Over all, I feel this is the right direction to go and from what I have [...]

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#23: TVI is a better term than Dot Gain

February 7, 2006

This is Part 1 of a 5 part series from Jim Raffel’s TVI notebook. Part 1: Tone Value Increase (TVI) really is a better term than Dot Gain: My short answer for this is that a densitometer (or spectrophotometer acting as a densitometer) does not actually measure dots, so how can we really call it [...]

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