Digital BW, The Print

Peter,

Been following your BO quest with great interest. Based on a couple of
prints I received from Clayton Jones--one quad printed and one
BO printed--I tried black-only printing with my 1160 on PhotoRag using MIS
VM black. My results were less than stellar. The first
print appeared very light in overall tonality and exhibited fairly high
contrast. Using the "brightness" slider in the driver (Epson) I dialed the
brightness back about -12%. This gave me a print with gamma closer to my
usual MIS VM quads, but low value separation was severely
lacking, and values in the 90%+ range dumped into total black. Not
acceptable. I played around with -1, -2, etc, S-curves to tame the
contrast, but still could not produce a print that even came close to
matching my VM quad prints.

Therefore, I would appreciate it if you could post the particulars
(settings, etc) for your BO printing on the 1160. You mentioned using
the MIS VM black on EAM. Epson driver? Driver settings? Driver version? Base
system (PC/Mac)? Anything you can think of that
may affect the results. I would love to get a decent BO print of an image
that I'm very familiar with printing. Having this I would feel that
I'm making some sort of valid comparison to my VM quad prints.

Thank you,
Alan Huntley

----- Original Message -----
From: "peter_in_seattle" <lists@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 1:40 PM
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: Seeking black-only workflow info


> Jerry,
>
> I was prepared to get all depressed about the 1160 having a 6-picoliter
> droplet size (even though I'm not exactly sure how big a picoliter is,
other than
> the fact that it's probably pretty darn small), but then I looked it up,
and yes, the
> 1160 has 4-picoliter variable-sized droplets:
> http://files.support.epson.com/pdf/sc1160/sc1160sl.pdf
> ... so theoretically, that's the exact same size droplet as the 1280. If
people are
> finding that their 1160 prints are "dottier" than similar prints from a
1280,
> maybe it's either the boost from the other 2 colors on the 1280, or maybe
the
> "variable-sized droplets" algorithm on the 1160 tends to produce larger
> droplets on the 1160 more often than on the 1280. If that's the case, then
> maybe the Epson driver is the problem. I wonder if there's a way to force
the
> droplets to always be 4 picoliters.
>
> By the way, I did give the black-only workflow a try, and I liked it.
Using Epson
> Archival Matte, it was really much better than I expected -- much, MUCH
better
> than black-only on Epson's glossy photo paper (using either MIS or Epson
> OEM ink). I was really impressed, actually, that there were grays. There
were
> dots, it's true, so it doesn't compare to a true quadtone, but at a normal
> viewing distance, the dots feel more like film grain than inkjet dots --
it kinda
> gives it the look of a Tri-X enlargement. Might be something to try if you
want
> some extra grain.
>
> My fourth print in a row (actually printed 2 days later) showed heavy
> microbanding (in the direction of print head movement). Maybe I should
have
> run a couple of cleaning cycles between prints. (The black is MIS VM
black.)
>
> Peter