OK, finally got a chance to test how well the borders worked, as suggested above. Let the inked borders print and then trim right down to the edges of the borders. It works! And under a variety of light sources too - daylight, solux 4700k, tungsten 2800k. It does a pretty good job of neutralizing the white of the warm paper I'm using. The trouble is that it is reliant on your eyes adjusting to the white of the print. If you look away to a different light source, and then look back to the print, for a second or so the print has a blue-ish border until your eyes adjust again. I'll keep using borders without any inking, as it seems to be more consistent. It is also consistent with prints previously produced.
I could add a spacing (transparent) border but...
If you print the borders with no ink, the opposite is true: as you are looking at the print, your eyes adjust to the border which is paper white so any white in your photo is going to look bluish. In addition, even the colors in the photo will be shifted a bit toward blue. If you are printing with a paper white border, you should really be printing with relative colorimetric intent. Have you printed with relative colorimetric and absolute colorimetric and compared them? I'm curious as to what you see that is making you print absolute colorimetric. In addition, and I didn't point this out before, but your white shift (that bluish tint) is a far greater shift in white than I have ever seen on any paper using AC intent. With every paper I have ever tested (even third party papers), the white shift is so subtle that you can't even pick it up with your eyes: you have to use magnification to even tell there is any ink laid on the paper. Yes, if you look at the print before cutting it, you can tell that the border is a slightly different shade but it typically only looks like a different shade of white: usually just a little bit more gray than white, not blue, red, or any color tint. So that has me questioning your profile to begin with, or maybe the paper if you are truly printing on paper with that much of a yellowish or redish cast that it needs that much correction to make it neutral.
Mike
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