Digital BW, The Print

I'm happy to report that the MIS and Epson Claria chips for the 1400 are still working together perfectly.  So, the use of Claria color carts with any other compatible inks opens the 1400 up to all sorts of combinations.  

With respect to B&W printing with the Claria inkset, the toned black only, with the light colors used to smooth the prints as needed, is pretty much in the bag.  It's there and works -- not great for all situations, but the unique dye characteristics on glossy paper are there to see.

Using only a single black has its limitations, however.  The 3K approach, as with the 1800 Eboni 3MK approach, takes care of most banding (still some at edges visible to critical viewers on some greeting cards).  Using only 100% black will, of course, still look a bit grainy in shots with plain skies.  Again, the light colors can be used to smooth this as needed.  So, this Claria 3K option, which requires no ink mixing and taps into the Noritsu bulk ink supplies is probably the most likely step to higher quality B&W with these dyes.  This is what is in my 1400 currently.  Using 100% black at the Noritsu K bulk prices makes for quite economical printing.  Very little color is needed.  LM takes care of 90% of the profiling needed, and this can be mixed by those who want to save even more money.  For most I'll just recommend Epson OEM colors and Noritsu K.

I tried to make an Epson driver workflow that used as few cart substitutions as possible -- like replacing the cyan channel with dilute Noritsu K.  They all ran into the same bad color cross-overs in the shadows that I see in Epson's "grayscale" mode.  If the black ink can only be turned on via moving all the color curves up to 100%, it looks like bad shadow cross-overs are inevitable.  So, for good B&W QTR is needed or a 100% black needs to be in a color position, limiting the number of grays available to 2 -- LK and K.  That is what I used in the 1400 Eboni-4 Plus with the Noritsu.  It's OK, but I'm aiming higher than that.  Two inks are still not quite enough for excellent printing. 

One interesting aspect of the Claria/Noritsu 3K approach (K, C, and M are Noritsu K) is that with a PS adjustment curve that neutralizes the grayscale -- more or less -- it actually prints a color image that is good enough for most of the color I print (definitely not fine art).  The fact that it is not that good is secondary to the fact that it works at all.  See http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/CL3K-Color-Sample.jpg for a sample of "color" printing with 3K in the 1400. It makes me wonder what a commercial profiler would do.  I might try that later.

Even with just having the Epson driver set to Color Controls and gamma 1.5, the 3K approach prints a plain paper image that is not that much different than the example above.  After all, the light colors are OEM Claria, and the 1.5 gamma minimizes the use of the dark colors where the Noritsu K is substituted in.  This is fine for my Google maps and casual internet photo printing.

For now, the Claria/Noritsu 3K ("CL3K") setup will remain in my "color" 1400.  Avoiding the need to mix inks opens this to a lot more people.  This will also make QTR profiles I generate for it more portable to the OEM B&W BO printers.  I'll match the BO and 3K cores so the toners and, hopefully, even linearization, will be the same for both.  

If I need the speed of the Epson driver or smoother printing without excess color, I'll put an LK in the LC position.

I've found that after changing ink types I can flush the channel with a single page of QTR printing 100% of that channel.  So, the ink waste and time is minimal.  This is a very flexible system.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com