Digital BW, The Print

Mitch,

for the color part of your questions, you may be better served discussing it 
over at  the archivalphoto or Epson 9000 etc groups. For the bw, and for IP5, 
here is some food for thought:

- IP5 is klunky under Mac OS 9, no doubt. And an inexperienced dealer may 
well be frustrated with the security and installation steps. But, once you get 
past that (with help from Colorbyte if you own a copy), the results are worth the 
trouble. I have only seen monochrome prints on my 7000 with Piezotones and 
like the results and the ease with which they printed. 
I am now waiting for the much anticipated 2200 diver to see all the claims that 
Andrew was making about its bw printing capability. Down the line, I believe 
that Colorbyte will provide functionality and performance that the Epson 
drivers will simply not touch. 

- I still believe that a quad (hex) tone print will be superior to one made by the 
7 ink Ultrachromes or any color inkset, but I haven't done serious side by side 
using ImagePrint yet. 

- The 2200 delivers good gamut and dmax, but no pigment printer beats a dye 
printer for dmax. To compare gamuts, install the profiles for each and check 
the Gamut Warning in PS 6 or 7. You'll find that the 2200 beats the 1280/90 
when using photo black on glossy or luster papers. 

- Generally speaking, the landscape is shifting very rapidly: What is the latest 
and unique Epson printer/ink combo with seemingly unbreakable chip code 
may be tomorrow's best CIS-adaptable printer with clone inks. And what was 
yesterdays best monochrome inkset, is today a pile of junk taking up space in 
my closet (as do the prints from said inkset). 
And all those claims of "years" of "longevity" and "archival" are bogus 
extrapolations that we'll discover a century from now when some collectors 
will be tearing their hair out and others sitting pretty with their silver prints. And 
if you enjoy the look of the "good" 25 years-under-glass, so be it. You'll 
probably find out  - sad to say - what it really means in only a few humid years 
in Bankok (as you unfortuantely did with those other color prints, if I recall). It's 
just the nature of this digital printing beast that we are trying to tame.

So, for now, pick your poison carefully!.....<g>


Antonis





--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., Mitch Alland <malland@m...> wrote:
> I have been thinking about replacing my 1290 for color and 1160 (with 
> Piezography) for B&W with a 2200. Subsequently, I started thinking 
> about getting a 7600 with ImagePrint, so that I could make prints 
> larger than 12x18 inches, both in color and B&W.
> 
> I just spent 3-1/2 hours at a local dealer trying out the 7600. First, 
> I tried to make a B&W print with ImagePrint. After working on this for 
> some 2-1/2 hours, all we were able to get ImagePrint to do was to print 
> a "demo" print. Okay, this wasn't the fault of ImagePrint: the staff at 
> the dealer didn't seem to know how to get ImagePrint to work. They had 
> trouble with the IP address and the "encryption" number for the dongle. 
> Yes, the blasted thing has a DONGLE! I am not sure that I want to buy 
> software using a dongle as I haven't had good experience with this in 
> the past. In the end, I gave up trying to make a B&W print. What I did 
> see is that ImagePrint is awfully kludgy on Mac System 9.
> 
> I then made a 12x18 inch color print on the 7600 using the Epson driver 
> on Archival Matte and compared it to a 12x18 print I had made my 1290 
> in Bangkok on Heavyweight Matte. There's simply no comparison: the 7600 
> print looks washed out in comparison to the 1290 prints.
> 
> I had always read statements on various internet forums that the color 
> gamut of the 2200/7600 were close to that of the 1280. Perhaps the 
> particular photo that I printed has a lot of colors that are within the 
> gamut of the 1280 but outside that of the 2200/7600: my photograph is a 
> close-up of parts of a Thai temple, the colors of which are various 
> gold colors. The 7600 print is much less saturated and much less yellow 
> than the 1290 print.
> 
> Now this particular photograph is part of a series of pictures of Thai 
> temples for an exhibition that I am preparing. The richness of the gold 
> colors, as well as the harmony" of such rich, strong colors and shapes, 
> is the major point of this photograph. The 7600 print is so flat and 
> dull that I would never exhibit it. While, according to Epson, the 1290 
> photo is supposed to "last" 25 years and the 7600 photo 100 years, it 
> seems to me that the 1290 photo in 25 years is likely to look like the 
> 7600 photo, so I'd rather enjoy 25 good years :-)
> 
> So the questions are:
> 
> 1. Am I missing something?
> 
> 2. Has anyone else had this experience? Or have I just happened to 
> print  a photograph that is outside the gamut of the 7600 but just 
> inside the gamut of the 1290? Is this likely?
> 
> 3. From this experience I find it difficult to understand why hordes of 
> protographers are rushing to buy the 2200. I certainly cannot 
> contemplate getting either the 2200 or the 7600 after seeing this 
> print. What do you think?
> 
> --Mitch