Digital BW, The Print

On 8/19/02 4:13 PM, "Austin Franklin" <darkroom@...> wrote:

> Hi TDD,
> 
> I don't understand your dMax comment.  The black ink is the blackest you can
> get out of the printer...right?  If you printed a patch of the darkest black
> using one "driver", and the same image using the other "driver"...how could
> they differ so significantly?  There should be no dithering going on for the
> darkest black with either...and it's the same ink...  Have you looked at
> what it's doing under a microscope?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Austin
> 
> P.S.  Do you actually have a name, aside from "thedigitaldog" that is?

The dither isn't an issue in dmax.  The issue is finding the optimum ink
load for a paper...which all of us who have tried to profile epson inks
know...epson doesn't do very well.  When imageprint generates a recipe they
look at the maximum amount of ink that you can put down and still get good
shadow detail.  They they linearize that ink.  This frequently results in
better dmax...but still with good shadow detail.  In my experience the dmax
may not be much higher than the epson  driver (but is usually higher than
the piezo driver)...but the shadow detail is like night and day.

The beauty of the dither is good ink entrance...Imageprint has the smoothest
gray ramps that I've seen...no sign (to the naked eye) of the inks coming in
and going out.  I can see ink entrance in every partitioned RGB workflow
that I've ever seen using the epson driver.  Sometimes I can't see it in
piezo output...but there are frequently bumps in the ramp instead.

Robert