Digital BW, The Print

Hello John,

>I am new to this group, and new to the digital darkroom in
>general.  

Welcome!  You've found a good forum.


>I wanted to retain the ability to work in color... 
>I am getting the best results by selecting "black only"...
>what is the simplest way for me to get decent quality B&W 
>prints now...

BO printing is definitely the simplest way and can be very beautiful,
and is a great way to get started while you develop your Photoshop
skills and explore other techniques.  And one of its advantages is
keeping a color cartridge in the printer.

There are some articles on my web page (see link below) which discuss
not only BO printing but some important Photoshop topics to help get
started.  You may find some of these to be helpful.


>I was under the impression that this uses the Light Black ink 
>as well, but recent messages suggest that this is not the case

I don't have a 2200, but Daniel and others have indicated that it
takes add-on software to print with just the two blacks.  Daniel uses
Power RIP I think (maybe he will pop in here with some details...)  I
have one of Daniel's prints using this technique and it's really
beautiful.

There are lots of other ink sets, but unfortunately the 2200 cannot
use all of them, so your options are more limited.  Hopefully more 3p
inks will be available for it in the future.  I think, at this point,
the 2200 requires 3p software to get hextone-type printing.  Maybe
some of the others can step in here with more info...

Glad to have you here in the BW Forum, and good luck with your work. 
There are lots of new things to explore.

Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm