Digital BW, The Print

Hi Bjorn,

There are a number of advantages:
* Nearly 50 paper profiles (though some of them may be repeats of the same
profile applied to papers with the same coating but different names);
* Controlling the printing process precisely for 'quadtone' so that you get
dot-free images, even in the highlights;
* Print from greyscale files instead of colour (that other systems
require) - these files are smaller;
* Print from 16-bit greyscale files for keeping data in 16-bit, extended
tonal control, less munging of data in 8-bit transforms etc;
* Print nearly any-length of panoramic image (certainly exceeding 88" if I
recall correctly, not sure if there is a practical or absolute limit);
* Print speed dramatically exceeds Epson driver on some models (e.g. 1160
and 980 are faster than their counterpart Epson driver, but the 3000 was
slowed down quite a bit to help control paper-feed issues with that
printer).

Many people have said that the profiles alone make it worth the money :) and
whilst the gap is slimming down, the driver does seem to be more 'reliable'
than the other options (e.g. it has been said that Piezo BW can cope with
grainy and smooth images, but MIS VM-type solutions benefit from an image
being grainy, as smooth tonal changes can show up as banding). This may have
been improved (in the alternatives) though.

The down-sides are that you need an 'good' as opposed to average printer.
Some people on this list like to use the Piezo driver with special variants
of the MIS 'FS' Quad inks instead of the Cone ones, so you do have a choice
of ink too. One slight disadvantge is that you do need to leave slightly
larger borders (mostly just top-and-bottom as I recall) on the page compared
to Epson drivers.

Disclosure here is that I sell Piezo products in the UK, but I am not the
only person to like it!

Hope this helps,
Nij

Nigel Rheam
MWORDS Limited   www.mwords.co.uk   Digital Fine Art



> -----Original Message-----
> From: bjornaagedk [mailto:bs@...]
> Sent: 21 April 2002 09:38
> To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [Digital BW] Piezo driver or not?
>
>
> Beginners question:
> What is the advantages of using Cone's piezo driver with Epson
> 1160 instead of just using the Epson driver?
> Bjorn