Digital BW, The Print

----- Original Message -----
From: "George Hartzell" <hartzell@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2002 11:23 AM
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Re: Epson 7600/9600 B/W Output Not What I Hoped
For.


> Martin Wesley writes:
>  > Mike,
>  >
(snip)

>  > While buying
>  > custom profiles is a possible solution, the fact that the inks and
papers
>  > vary from lot to lot may make this impractical unless you invest in
your own
>  > profiling software. The unfortunate truth seems to be that neutral B&W
>  > printing is much more sensitive to tiny shifts in hue than color
printing.
>  > [...]
>
> I was fortunate to get to spend some time with Bill Atkinson last
> week.  He has a 9600 and is working on developing some custom profiles
> for it.  He's found that none of his normal profiling packages seem to
> deliver results that give good neutral grayscales, so he's been
> hacking his way to something better.  And, the profiles that he
> generates will be freely available!

George,

I am not surprised. I still have not heard of a profiling package that was
capable of doing printer profiles for grayscale ink sets so I guess the same
applies in this case. Tell Bill to check his licensing on the profiling
software. They generally don't allow you to share them.
>
> His results look wonderful, though he still has some fine tuning to
> do.  I got a kick out of noticing a *slight* green deviation in the
> almost white tones and then seeing it confirmed by a set of
> spectrophotometer readings.  I'm not usually that astute!
>
> This will probably only be useful to the bigger printer folk (7600 and
> 9600), and just how useful will depend on how successful Epson is at
> delivering on their promised printer-to-printer consistency.  It'll be
> worth keeping tuned to though.

It is good news on the one hand that he is making progress and getting some
good results, but this is also frustrating for those who do not have access
to spectrophotometers, profiling software and, most importantly, the
expertise. The B&W capability of these printers has been promoted as a
feature that is available out of the box, or at least that is my impression.

Martin