Digital BW, The Print

I stayed up late last night and printed six letter-size prints of the 
same picture with the warm, neutral or medium warm, and cold curves 
for each printer--Tyler's curves for the 1280 and Paul's for the 
1290.  All three of Paul's 1290 curves turned out nice and smooth.  
Tyler's 1280 medium warm is the best, but shows a little tonal bump 
in the low end which exaggurates facial shadows a bit.  I didn't try 
the neutral "crv09" curve this time around, but I've used it before 
and found it similar to the meduim warm.  The warm and cold 1280 
curves are noticeably worse.  They both have an even more pronounced 
bump. It really brings out grain noise and a sandpaper-like look in 
out-of-focus shadows.

Slight posterization of a middle aged person's salt-and-pepper hair 
seems to be an endemic problem with inkjet printing, but the warm and 
cold 1280 curves *really* show it.

Tyler's medium-warm 1280 curve is certainly quite usable.  But I 
think Paul is right--there must be some bug in the 1280 driver which 
makes smooth curves very difficult.  

The 1290 driver works well on the 1280 with only minor inconvenience--
that being that I have to use the 1280 Properties sheet to check ink 
level.   So I'm sticking with the 1290 driver in future.

A couple of people have asked me where to find the 1290 driver. Go to 
www.epson.co.uk   That will take you to the Epson UK site.  Then 
follow links for support and download drivers, and you'll find it.  
The full link to the page where you select a printer and operating 
system is:  http://www.epson.co.uk/support/download/inkjet.htm

--Peter Klein
Seattle, WA