Digital BW, The Print

Yesterday I spent the day working with the president of ColorByte (they make 
Image Print), Photographer Greg Gorman and the new version of the software 
that drives the 9600/7600 (and within two weeks) the 2200. Gorman is trying 
get neutral B&W using all inks (like many of you). We've built custom profiles 
with the Epson driver but after yesterday, I'm understanding that this isn't 
necessary and that the huge issues with neutrality are primarily the Epson 
driver. 

The prints we made were DEAD NUTS NEUTRAL from the entire tonal range. 
NO metamerism what so ever (ColorByte's special grayscale mode doesn't 
use any yellow ink which is the cause for metamerism). We viewed prints 
under a GretagMacbeth "Judge II" light box which simulates Daylight (D50), 
Tungsten, Cool White Florescent lights etc. The prints were perfectly neutral. 

The dither is superior to Epsons. The dMax was significantly better when 
sending identical data to the printer using Epson driver (with custom profile) 
verses the canned paper profiles from ColorByte. 

We were, needless to say, blown away. We need some profiles from 
ColorByte to see what can be done in color. I've seen output from Image Print 
to a 7600 at a recent show and they looked awesome. I'd like to wait until 
we've tested color with our own set of tests before commenting further. But if 
Image Print can print B&W images like this to our Epson's, I can't see why we 
will not get awesome color. 

The smoothness of tones is like butter. Image Print uses 8000 levels of 
screening (Epson we were told uses a few hundred). All this and the print 
times are the same as using the Epson driver.

The issues with neutral prints is no longer an issue! I'm not kidding when I say 
that looking at output from the old printing methods verses with Image Print, it 
was like working with a totally new printer. This isn't the 9600 output Greg and 
I have been testing for the last 5 or 6 months (we did beta on the printer). The 
quality results are 100% superior to anything we've ever seen.