Digital BW, The Print

I can only comment on ImagePrint for the 2200, but I am convinced it is the
way to go for B&W printing on this printer, and I highly doubt it would let
you down for the 7600 or 9600.  Still, you might want to make sure there is
a reasonable return policy before spending your money.

Also, if you haven't tried Bill Atkinson's free profiles for your 9600, you
might give them a shot first.  I've seen reports that they work very well.
You can find them on Epson's site:
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/Redirect.jsp?ygtsi=ICCProfilesStylusPro76
00

I purchased IP because I was unhappy with the default performance of my
2200.  Using the standard profiles and even photo-realistic mode, the prints
looked cool to me and exhibited noticable metamerism.

I tried the gray balancer and quickly grew tired of making iteration after
iteration of tweaks without achieving the holy grail of perfect neutrality.
Besides, the metamerism was still there.

I spent the money for IP and although I think it is pricey, the bottom line
is it works, and it works well.  It is not without problems though.  The
user interface is a bit difficult and I had some installation problems to
overcome.  Once you learn to deal with their interface though, you will be
able to make beautiful B&W prints with little effort.

As a comparison, I just spent 2 hours playing with Epson's new Stylus RIP
for the 2200.  I have to say I'm not impressed.  A print of a grayscale step
wedge shows noticable magenta and cyan tones in various patches, and their
grayscale mode printed a horrible step wedge that went solid black in the
90% patch.  Granted, it gives you more knobs to turn than the Epson driver,
and I could probably get much better results by spending more time with it,
but I've realized that you can spend an entire lifetime adjusting profiles
and evaluating step wedges.  IP handles all that for you and lets you get
back to printing real images.

--Tom

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Carter" <mc_776@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 02, 2003 9:12 PM
Subject: [Digital BW] ImagePrint Sale


> Tom,
>
> I ONLY want to print to one printer (9600).  I want to print black & white
> with the 9600 and Colorbyte has a gray picker.  Inkjetmall has a sale
going
> on the large format version for windows and I can save $750. Is it
> everything Colorbyte cracks it up to be?
>
> Mark
>