Digital BW, The Print

----- Original Message -----
From: "tboleyyh" <tyler@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2002 10:28 AM
Subject: [Digital BW] R9 & Imageprint was PiezoTone Selenium 300 Hr Fade
test


> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Martin Wesley"
> snip
> > ink combinations which would make IP very attractive with limited
> > development cost to ColorByte.
> >
> > As it currently stands though I would not recommend it for the 1280
> due to
> > the lack of profiles, they don't even have the MIS-VM profiles
> although the
> > website says they are supported, and the high cost. Lots of great
> features
> > that really are of little use to someone doing quad printing on a
> 1280. The
> > dither is on a par with the Piezo/R9 plugin but no better.
>
> I take it you've had the chance to try it then. Somewhere I thought I
> saw a comment from you that you were getting no increase in Dmax from
> it. That comment along with this are of interest. I think any
> experiences you have with it would be of great interest here, we have
> very little variety of reports so far.

Tyler,

I bought a copy of IP5 for my 1280 directly from Colorbyte the day or two
before it was announced on the Inkjetmall site and spoke to John
Pannozzo(?), Colorbyte's president. Currently the 1280 is the only desktop
printer being supported for grayscale inks. In total there are 7 for paper
profiles for MIS-FS, There are 9 paper profiles for Piezo/Sundance and 9 for
Lumijet but it is not clear what printer these are meant for. No specific
instructions are included for grayscale although I did manage to figure it
out.

Apparently I misunderstood John on the phone. He said they needed to get
back to doing work on the MIS-VM profiles and I took that to mean they were
going to add more profiles but in fact it appears that no profiles have
actually been done for the VM ink set although they are listed as a
supported set for the 1280. A simple profile is not going to work for the VM
inks as there needs to be some way to use the toner inks to adjust hue.

They had expected to profile the Selenium PT inks earlier but had not yet
received any 1280 cartridges from ConeTech when we spoke but they thought
the Selenium profiles would be ready soon. Given the current problems
ConeTech is having with the 1280 cartridges this may be put off for awhile.
I don't know why the Warm Neutral PiezoTone has not been profiled since a
profile for that would probably be a good enough match to the Selenium-PT.

So the only ink I have in a printer to try with ImagePrint 5 is the Selenium
PT without a specific profile. I ran some test wedges and prints using IP5
and the Piezo plugin with various profiles and driver settings and compared
the results. The Piezo profiles with the 1280 were much smoother than any of
IP5 profiles with this ink, but keep in mind these profiles were not meant
for this ink either. Neither was perfect but I have found the Piezo is
usable for printing. I gather that is not the case for people using 1160's.

I tried the IP5 at its two highest quality settings, "1440 4-pass" and "1440
8-pass" and the Piezo plugin at "Better" and "Best" to compare the dither
pattern. I am assuming the dither is independent of the profiles. I found
that the IP5 "1440 4-pass" and the Piezo "Better" were indistinguishable.
With a loupe I could see a slight linear pattern in the direction of head
travel in some mid tones which is typical of the 1280 with all drivers I
have seen so far. This was not visible at even close viewing distances. The
"1440 8-pass" produced a dither pattern of very fine lines in the direction
of paper travel. You need to get out a loupe to see them but the overall
effect seemed harsh and I did not find it pleasing, maybe a sharpening
issue. The Piezo set to "Best" also gives a dither pattern in the direction
of paper travel but it appears to have a weave applied but I did not like
the effect even though a loupe is needed to see it. I think the IP5 "1440
4-pass" and Piezo/R9 "Better" dithers are equal to the quality of the Epson
driver dither on the 1280 which I like.

I did take some Dmax readings from the Selenium-PT step wedges on Photo Rag
and got the following results:

IP5 with the MIS-FS-orwell profile:
1440 4-pass mode - 1.76
1440 8-pass mode - 1.77

Piezo/R9 plugin with the Photo Rag 188 profile:
"Better" - 1.79
"Best" - 1.76

We know that Dmax is driver dependent so it is possible that with a proper
profile that IP5 would do better. The potential is there since I have gotten
reading of up to 1.9 with the Epson driver.

I called Colorbyte this morning and they told me how to print out test
patches and they will do some custom profiles for me. So I will send them
some Selenium PiezoTone on EAM, Photo Rag and German Etching. Once I have
these then I can assess if IP5 can produce a better tone ramp than the
current Piezo driver. I would expect that this would be the case given the
poor match between the Piezo/R9 driver and the PT inks..

IP5 has a lot of features for laying out pages and custom print packages and
the interface is pretty good but for the B&W printing I am doing this is on
the 1280 this will not get any use. Very important for the large printers
though. Also lots of color correction tools that I will not be using.

At this point though I have a hard time seeing the value of IP5 at its
current price. If all the profiles were there and you had variable toning
capabilities with the VM inks then it might be worth the higher price to
you. Personally I like having multiple tools like this available for
printing different images. Often one driver/workflow is successful when
another isn't. But not at this price/feature point. From the point of view
of grayscale ink printing it seems to be a work in progress. Ultimately
though this could be the way to go when it is done. I like the idea of a
software solution that has no allegiance to any specific ink.

>
> > > > I suggested to Hiram French that it might be to his benefit and the
> > benefit
> > > > of the end users to profile the MIS-FS and PiezoTone inks for the R9
> > plugin
> > > > as well as the Sundance inks.
>
> They would be very well advised to do so. Conetech's sales of the
> plugin actually went up with the arrival of the alternative MIS
> inkset. Many have migrated from the Sundance inks, they'd sell far
> more plugins if they supported other inksets. If you are famliliar
> with the plugin, you know that there is a dropdown selection box for
> inksets, as well as the other one for paper profiles. It seems ready
> to go, they should just do it, particularly since it sounds like they
> are going to continue to develope it for future OS's.
> I think I read they have a forum on their site, interested people
> should inundate them with requests for this.

You are right about the ink drop down. I just haven't touched it since there
is nothing there and forgot about it. It is obvious that multi ink support
is built in so adding the other ink profiles would seem to be just a matter
of wading through all the test patch printing and reading and profile
tweaking. Probably not rocket science but a lot of hours and you need to
have the printers with all the different inks. They do not have the printers
and the inks, but I think that the members of this group would be more than
willing to provide a flood of test patches.

I don't see a link to a forum but their e-mail addresses are:

support@...
info@...

I suggest that everyone take Tyler's advice and send a request to have your
favorite ink included in the plug-in. ConeTech is not going to do it from
what I am seeing.

Martin Wesley