Digital BW, The Print

Nij,

When I printed out my 100% black squares with the Piezo inks I first 
exported through the Piezo driver and then, on the second one, used 
the Epson drive but selected "Black Only" in the driver options. I 
believe that in this mode the Epson uses just the black ink cartridge.

Also if you run all four inks into the black area I would expect a 
lighter result since you are diluting the pure black with lighter 
shades or because the lighter inks wind up on top of the darker ones. 
What I saw on the squares looked like a dusting of lighter ink on top 
of the black ink.

This is very easy to do and you can see for yourself.

In any case, it does suggest that it might be possible to adjust the 
Piezo driver to deliver just the black ink at the 100% level to 
increase the Dmax slightly. I don't think we are talking about a big 
difference here and there may be other tonal trade offs which are 
less desirable. 

Martin



--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Nij" <nigel@m...> wrote:
> Jerry - a suggestion for why this may be the case...
> 
> When printing dark blacks or greys, I believe the Epson driver uses 
all four
> colours CMYK (don't know what it does with the 'photo' colours  on 
a Photo
> printer... but this would suggest that 'blacks will end up getting 
printed
> with all three greys + black on top of each other... Piezo driver 
will print
> Black only, or black + darkest grey.
> 
> Just a guess.
> 
> Nij
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Jerry Olson [mailto:jerryolson@r...]
> > Sent: 06 September 2001 16:34
> > To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y...
> > Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Re: Black comparison MIS / piezo (was 
black
> > only 2880)
> >
> >
> > Martin, I accidentally printed a piezo print yesterday (regular
> > piezo inks) with the epson driver instead of the piezo driver. 
Just forgot
> > to choose the export module, and it printed with the epson driver.
> >
> > The piezo black ink printed considerably darker with the epson
> > driver than with the piezo driver. For this print, the epson 
driver gave a
> > much more pleasing print.
> >
> > Weird.
> >
> > Jerry
> >
> >
> >
> > > All this seems to confirm earlier reports that the Piezo and 
MIS VM
> > > blacks are very similar. Also confirms that the Piezo inks are
> > > capable of deeper blacks than the Piezo driver produces.
> >
> > Yes, That was proven to me yesterday.
> >
> > Jerry