Digital BW, The Print

-Thanks for the valuable information. I don't have the space (currently), nor 
can I justify the cost of a 7600 right now.  (I understand it is the size of a small 
gas barbeque).  But, I suspect the 2200 offers similar performance on a small 
scale.

I am curious how you did your custom profile.  That is, did you create separate 
profiles that were optimized for B/W and color printing.  Some have suggested 
that the Epson driver is more linear when you use the photorealistic setting 
(under color controls), rather than no color adjustment setting with improved 
ink density.  So, when printing their targets for an optimized B/W profile they 
are using this setting which is starting the printer at something closer to linear 
with better separation of the blacks on a step wedge.  This apparently reduces 
the color gamut, but supposedly provides better B/W imaging.  Did you do 
that, or use the traditional no color adjustment setting.

I definitely cannot consider doing the profiling myself, but am prepared to 
spend ~100-200 for a custom profile///   Yet this can get expensive if I decide 
to change paper types.  For now, I will start off with Photo Rag I think.  Do you 
have any recommendations for a reliable profiling company that you may 
have worked with.

I may have misunderstood your response but you said:

if reprofiling doesn't improve things "I may fool around with 
converting to RGB and throwing a curve on them"  

Does that mean that prints with your current profile were printed in grayscale 
mode.  I am very new to this color management thing and very naive.  But, I 
was told that is necessary to print all my monochrome images in RGB mode 
when sending them to the color printer.  Is this true or not.