Digital BW, The Print

Mark,

I agree with you! But, we have two parallel threads going on here... yours
re: manufacturers and resellers claims. Others, re: failure of resellers to
support new product with software and profiles i.e. one might say... the
_lack_ of claims ???! (or substantiated claims, or claims with backup of
profiles or...)

That's my perception of the threads anyways.

How can one explain the differences between some products, like the
different 'levels' of colour management... or quantify the flatness of a
film held in a film holder? Or the colour stability of a lamp, or the
consistency in grinding of pigment particles in an ink formulation? Or...?
And even if you can explain that eg. a 700-sample profile is better than a
200 profile, how much better is it if you are using a scanner than a
photospectrothiingummy? (Like all those ?100 USB scanners with 19200 dpi
scanning resolution!)

So, do we as consumers really want sales pitches that go like:
"Buy our new scanner, it scans really great 8000dpi at 16bpp, but of course,
it takes an hour to scan a single image, and when you realise how much time
it takes to handle 600MB files you'll be wanting our chunky RAID, new
DVD-writer, a workstation, and new lights to appreciate the colour
management (which is mid-range - buy our super enhanced package for...)"

Or "Profiles for many popular papers, only ?30 each!"

Or "Free profiles!"

I know I prefer honesty in theory... but in practice... ???

Nij


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Tucker [mailto:mark@...]
<snip>
> Part of why I'm voicing this publicly, Harvey, is that I wished
> someone had said all this publicly to ME. I think then, I would
> have had a bit more realistic expectations about inkjet printing. I
> come out of eighteen years of anal-retentive fiber B/W printing,
> so admittedly, I'm a pretty tough customer. But I also agree with
> what Martin said in an earlier post: if some of the limitations of
> these products are stated up front, in advance, then maybe I
> wouldn't feel kinda burned. But when you're dropping thousands
> at a time, it's hard to keep a good attitude when the prior product
> wasnt' up to snuff.
<snip>