Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Thomas Fors" 
<tom@f...> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Lloyd O'Daniel" <lodaniel@b...>
> 
> 
> > Fiddling with the tiny and expensive 2200
> > carts would only be tolerated if there was a clear and present
> > improvement in print quality.
> 
> For B&W, I think quad inks will still beat the 2200/IP.

I can't really give it a fair comparison since I was using 
non-standard MIS VM curves at 2880, and since I don't have any "good" 
non-green old piezo prints left hanging around.
But in one respect it beats the quads hands down, at least so far: 
reliability; less  (probably not zero)down time due to bad ink, clogs, 
etc- important in my dry climate at alititude.

<snip>

> 
> I was mistaken.  The price for additional desktop printers is $200.
> Although, I did get a reply from John at Colorbyte regarding 
pricing.  He
> said they realize desktop printers need to be supported at a 
reasonable
> price and that they're working on that now.


Can you tell more about this at this point? I suppose they won't give 
me a rebate since I already bought it, but will they extend tech 
support or something other?
<snip>

> > I realize Colorbyte has said that they would not support 3rd party 
color
> > inks. But, if you bought IP5 and sent them a 1280 color target 
printed
> > with Gen4, they'd have to profile it for you, right?
> 
> I don't know that they would.  My impression was the profiling 
service was
> only for papers that they hadn't profiled yet.


After a paper was profiled for a particular printer/ink/dpi/%ink 
reduction (optional), why would you reprofile it exactly with same 
parameters? Perhaps I misunderstand your answer...

There are many, many examples of paper that have been profiled more 
than once for different printers say. For example Eclipse paper was 
profiled for the 7600 but not the 2200. I have been working with 
Colorbyte to fix mottling at 100%k in the new 2200 Eclipse curves I 
got from them last week by sending them targets. I think they will 
then generate a 95%k reduction curve in the next two weeks, so Eclipse 
on the 2200 will actually have two profiles for the 2200.

  Daniel in tech 
support did
> tell me that you can generate your own color profiles and use them 
with IP.
> Their color profiles appear to be standard icc files, but their gray
> profiles are not.

If you open a color image in Imageprint while a "grey" profile is 
selected in "color corection" menu, it views as greyscale! You can 
then choose a color profile and all will be well. The tint picker goes 
inactive with a color profile selected.There does seem to be a 
different reaction between the color and grey profiles, yet they have 
the same file extensions. 

> 
> > Second, I read the find print on Colobyte's site which stated that 
Auto
> > print, print tiling, and color correction is disabled on the 
desktop
> > version of IP. The first two features are clearly explained and I 
could
> > do without them. But it's unclear just exactly what is meant by 
disabled
> > color correction. That sounds ominous. I would certainly want
> > clarification of exactly what limitation that imposes because that 
could
> > be a deal-killer. Can y'all elaborate on what is meant by that on 
the
> > web page?
> 
> Color correction refers to the tools they provide within IP such as
> tone/cast, histogram adjustment, and overall color adjustments that 
you can
> (can't) make to your images.  An alternative is to make your color
> adjustments in photoshop before you go to IP.

Colorbyte says it's a convienent way to make corrections to the image 
just prior to printing and not to be permanent correction to the file. 
 Actually, color correction shouldn't be needed or used if you did 
your work right in pshop. You'd have to redo the color correction in 
IP5 everytime you printed it (you can save the correction settings 
though). If you have to keep correcting for say a cyan tint to all 
your photos coming out of pshop- I'd say you have a problem elsewhere.

Most of the color correction menu is designed to alter color cast in 
COLOR images only. The controls for a change are very intuitive, 
visually showing you if you're adding more CMY or RGB, etc. Greyscale 
only has one option in this menu: ink reduction which I already said 
is not disabled for the 2200.

The best way to find out what the color correction tabs look like and 
do is do the online tour and skip to the color correcting section. 
BTW, "Color correction" and "Color management" are very diferent 
Colorbyte terms: management makes your grey/color prints come out 
WYSIWYG and with even tonal gradation/ no unwanted greyscale casts, 
etc and is definitly enabled. Correction is merely tweaking your color 
"problem" file because it's too cyan, or whatever.

 
 <snip>

> Auto Print is a tool that allows you to create a "hot folder" that 
anyone on
> a network can drop images into and they will automatically print 
according
> to templates that you specify.

On a network it might be a good thing, but I don't want a TSR on my 
computer checking for new prints in the folder every 30 seconds. Since 
you can have a folder for each setting (i.e. one for photorag letter 
at 1440, another for luster 13x19 at 2880 as an extreme example) who 
would be in charge of loading the correct paper/k ink for each job 
that shot through the network?<g>
Jim H.

> 
> --Tom