Digital BW, The Print

Thanks for the report, Andrew...this was my impression as well...I was with
John from Colorbyte the day before he met with Greg and I was likewise
impressed...but they still didn't equal the prints that I've gotten from
imageprint with the Piezotones in my 7000...but much, much closer than
anything I had seen from a color printer before...but I agree...Imageprint
is the key here...the epson driver just doesn't cut it.

Robert

On 8/17/02 4:11 PM, "thedigitaldog" <andrew@...> wrote:

> 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.
> 
>