Digital BW, The Print

Happy New Year to all, and with that, here is a bit of news on a 
product that may in fact make life easier for  those of us trying to 
make the best digital bw prints possible.

 It seems that the wraps are about to come off on a piece of 
software that brings a whole new set of functionality to inkjet 
printing of grayscale files. I am currently testing a beta version of 
what is - for now - called Inkjet Control (IJC for short).

The big news is that IJC allows end-users to make their own 
profiles as well as choose which jets to use (from the 4-7 jets of 
an Epson printer). It supports the 1160 / 1280 / 2200 of the 
desktops and the 7000/9000 series. The connection is only 
through USB and for now, it is only for the Mac OS 9 (though it 
runs respectably in Classic under OS X). It accepts 8 or 16bit 
files and recognizes embedded gammas as well as gives you a 
choice of 1.8 or 2.2 print gamma.

It has worked fine for me so far, though there are still some bugs 
and limitations (for example, you can't define custom paper sizes 
or use rolls). The interface will need some tweaking but that's 
just a matter of time . Bear in mind that IJC is dongle-protected 
and that to make accurate profiles one needs a densitometer.  
And having a spreadsheet program available helps with 
profiling, though not an absolute necessity.

This may still be a bit rough-around-the-edges  but it is 
promising enough and functional enough that the company 
wants to sell a limited number of copies to users likely to  be 
able to explore it and provide good feedback. 

You can reach them at:

ijc@...

Meanwhile, in my own use, it has made it possible to:

- match prints between printers and inksets 
- update a profile for my 1280 whose CIS seems to run a little 
lighter at the beginning of the day, thus maintaining consistency 
from print to print.
- correct a weirdness in a 7000 black head (that was putting out 
some extra dots to the right) by running it at a slightly lower ink 
limit. 
-  make toned bw prints from a 2200 by using the black and gray 
to make a complete grayscale and then adding just a touch of a 
color ink to tone it.
- load inks from whatever  inkset and in whatever order I needed 
(for example to produce a split tone or use a black from a 
different inkset). Since I can use any combination of available 
jets, I made a grayscale from 3 grays and a black and kept 2 
positions for toners (on a 9500).
- optimize a profile for text-only pages of a book that used black 
and light gray . This allowed me to control how "heavy" black type 
will appear and also make the gray pretty much dotless.
- reduce dots across the scale by deciding where I want the 
darker inks to kick in and how "fast".
- gotten better dmaxes by having access to the full range of 
power with which the head is driven and deciding where to limit it 
depending on papers etc. 

The jury is still out on issues of screen-matching. I find that a 
print setting of 1.8 (for untagged or 1.8-tagged files) closely 
matches the screen to the print in all but the shadow areas.   For 
critical work a preview profile is still a good idea in Photoshop.  
But because the inks can be adjusted to whatever curves or 
aims you like, all these issues are not "hardwired" and can be 
addressed by the end-user . 

For now, I'd say that people totally new to mono printing should 
consider carefully if they want to jump in on the "pre-release" 
phase. Anyone with a densitometer and (optionally) a functional 
understanding of  Excel, however, is bound to be a power user 
overnight!
Profiles may not be readily available yet , but  some basic ones, 
for EAM and Piezotones or  MIS-FS inks and perhaps the 1280 
and 7000 are likely to be. Still, I find that if you have one or two 
decent profiles as a start, you can quickly tweak them to 
accomodate other papers, inksets and printers. And I am sure 
once IJC comes into wide use, there will be tons of profiles to 
share (and upload to lists etc). So, in a way, the fact that it may 
not ship initially with many profiles will only affect  users 
expecting total plug-and-play.

Looks like we are off to a good start this year!....

Antonis