Digital BW, The Print

For: Peter Nelson:

> I recently bought a 2200 because some reviews said it did
> good black and white printing.  But it has so much metamerism
> that the black and white prints it makes are unacceptable.

Yes, perhaps the review on Luminous Landscape is particularly 
pernicious because that forum seems to have gained much (unwarranted) 
credibility. The reviewer claims that straight prints with the 2200 
produce good, neutral B&W. But, if you look at his review of earlier 
printers, you will see that he also claimed that the 1270, and 
subsequently, the 1280 printed superb B&W "right out of the box" with 
the Epson profiles. It looks the reviewer is mainly concerned with 
color prints, or simply doesn't have a good eye for B&W prints. It 
reminds me of a New Yorker cartoon of a few years ago showing a dog 
sitting at a desk typing at a computer speaking to dog sitting on the 
floor saying, "And the great thing about the internet is that nobody 
knows you're a dog."


> Reading this forum and Photo.Net I can see people are desperate
> and try a zillion different approaches to black and white ranging
> from black-only to expensive RIPs to profilers to hextone printing.
> Everyone has their special approach and no one method seems
> to be endorsed by more than a few percent of users.

I don't think that the users of B&W printing solutions are as 
fragmented as the impression you have gained from reading this forum. 
Basically, the are three major sets of solutions:

1. Printing "Black Only":  Using only the black inks, the prints 
"neutral" but may have a tone that you may not like. More importantly, 
Black Only prints show dots in the highlights that, to me, are not 
acceptable, although some people obviously like this method. You can 
easily try it on your 2200 and see for yourself.

2. Printing with "Quad or Hex Inks": My experience is using Piezography 
on the 1160, and this produced superb prints on Hahnemuehle Photo Rag 
paper with beautiful gradation. Yes, I occasionally had some clogging 
and banding problems which I understand have been eliminated by the new 
Piezotone inks, for which there are several "tone" choice; particularly 
the Selenium tone inks of which I have seen sample prints. But the 
trouble is, as you say, that this requires a second printer dedicated 
to B&W. Nevertheless, the prints can be breath-taking, so you shouldn't 
necessarily ignore this solution. In March, there will be a new 
Piezography system that you might want to consider. But, in my own 
case, I bought a 7600 printer because I wanted to make larger prints 
than 13x19 inches (Super A3) and also because I wanted to have one 
printer for color and B&W, so I appreciate your concern. [For 
completeness, I should state that you can also use other Quad I (or 
Hex) ink solutions and use the various "work flows" often discussed on 
this forums. I am sure that these work flow solutions also produce 
beautiful prints, but I used Piezography because it seemed simpler and 
I was very have with the range and smoothness of the tones.]

3. Printing with ImagePrint: This gives spot-on neutral B&W prints with 
the possibility of "toning" using the Tint Picker in the software. In 
my view, the gradation of these prints is as good as that of 
Piezography. Also, ImagePrint will allow you to use your 2200 for both 
color and B&W. Incidentally, the ImagePrint color profiles are even 
slightly better than the Bill Atkinson profiles that are available for 
the 7600/9600 in that they provide better detail in the dark tones, in 
the manner of Piezography.


> My question is should I upgrade my darkroom and stick with darkroom
> prints for B+W or will we SOON see a straightforward, off
> the shelf solution to digital black-and-white printing?

No, the solutions are there but, like the darkroom, each of them have a 
learning curve. How long did it take you before you could make good 
darkroom prints?

--Mitch/Bangkok