Digital BW, The Print

On Friday, January 31, 2003, at 10:47  PM, jsinger986 
<jsinger986@...> wrote:

> The printer operator did use the "black only" setting.  He said that 
> all the prints he tried any other way came out with a green caste.  He 
> showed me the non "black only" print and it was green, but I didn't 
> examine it closely so I'm not sure about the dots and loss of detail.

It is well recognized that the standard Epson driver behavior is so 
non-linear that neutral gray BW images using that driver are nearly 
impossible, even using excellent color management profiling and 
application techniques.

> I was really hoping the 2200 would be the answer because I'd like to 
> be able to print color and B&W on the same printer.  I'm really 
> interested in Piezography, but that would require two printers.  Right 
> now I shoot 95% b&w so b&w quality is very important to me.  But, 
> color is something that I will be doing down the road.
>

The 2200 should serve you very well, but you should splurge and buy the 
ImagePrint RIP to go with it. I did not when I first bought my 7600, 
and after a full complete round of tuning and custom color management 
profiling and testing and cursing, I bought the "other half" of my 
printer and re-did all that work, and I'm now very happy. Even if you 
don't want to invest in your own profiling solutions, the 
Colorbyte-provided profiles (for the 7600, at least) are surprisingly 
usable for color work, so if they do as well on the 2200 profiles and 
if the 2200 is as consistent as the 7600 appears to be, you may be good 
to go. Be forewarned, however, that custom color management always pays 
big dividends in the long run (and quite often in the immediate startup 
process).

But most importantly, the ImagePrint RIP uses special grayscale 
profiles with a special grayscale "mode" of controlling the ink, and 
the results are great. I had actually replaced my 1270 with dual 1280's 
-- one dedicated to Epson dye-based color ink for color printing, and 
another dedicated to Peizography BW for grayscale printing. The Peizo 
print quality was good enough, but the DMax fade factor really bothered 
me, as did the recommended practice of monitor-to-print "calibration". 
With the ultrachrome inks and the ImagePrint RIP, I can now do it all 
with a single machine again, with even better results (I prefer the 
more dead-neutral black of the ImagePrint grayscale mode over the very 
warm tone of the Peizo prints, but this is purely personal preference). 
The quality of the tonal range and transitions definitely varies from 
paper type to paper type, and you still have to do a convoluted 
monitor-to-print "calibration" process for decent "soft preview" 
capability, but the results are really very, very good.

 From what I understand, the 2200 should exhibit similar excellent 
quality, if treated with similar respect.

/eddie