Digital BW, The Print

Great question, I wish I knew the answer. I struggled with it a lot. 
For my eye, I discovered that having the Epson colored inks in there 
instead of quad made the alignment squares more clear. I just couldn't 
do alignments with an accuracy smaller than say, being off by two or 
three squares with quad inks.

As to the regular pattern you speak of, I don't remember seeing it 
when the Epson inks are loaded at least- but I have to heavily 
disclaim that as it's been quite awhile since I've done an alignment 
and don't remember. I haven't really seen any patterns showing up in 
the prints except with the VM inksets sometimes posterization in near 
shadow occasionally. But I could be missing something. So I guess you 
are seeing a non-random pattern showing up in the dither?

My solution is to use only one paper, Eclipse Satine 190 gsm, so I 
just never do alignments after an initial one with OEM carts. I set 
the lever on "+" all the time on the advice of someone else who used 
the paper, and just left it there.

It may be hard to do, but is there a way to post a sample of a print 
with a pattern to it- maybe a high res flatbed scan?
Jim H. 





--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., Robert Morrison 
<rmorrison@p...> wrote:
> For those of you using 1280's to do quad printing, what do you look 
for in
> the second step of the print head alignment?  I've been choosing 
what I
> think is the "least grainy" pattern, however, there seems to be a 
regular
> pattern in it which is tending to manifest itself in prints.  Do you 
choose
> the least grainy pattern that does not have a regular pattern in it? 
I've
> never done this with color inks...so I'm not sure what the purpose 
is...and
> how I should translate the instructions given that I'm using quads 
(hexs).
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Robert