Digital BW, The Print

Hi Paul;

A couple things to add about the 7500-

I got rid of another small but noticeable increment of graininess by 
doing a very carefull 'B-head slant' alignment, that got me back to 
round dots instead of oval. 

The other thing I've discovered, is that feeding a large file to the 
Epson driver for a small print results in some rather fuzzy 
downsampling. That surprised me, since I saw no sign of that with 
the 1280 driver. It works much better to resize AND downsample in 
PS, with a final light sharpening than to send it directly to the 
printer. What works even better in terms of sharpness at least, is 
to print it through Qimage - the downsampling and 'smart sharpening' 
they use is extraordinary. It is also CM compliant, though I don't 
know it well enough to tell you if you can use partitioning curves 
with out apllyihg and saving in PS first. Probably not worth the 
nuisance.

DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Roark" 
<paul.roark@v...> wrote:
> I've been playing with the 7500 again today and have a few 
observations that
> might be useful.
> 
> First, I unchecked the "High Speed" box in the driver.  It 
substantially
> smoothed out some roughness I had.
> 
> Second, the Watercolor paper setting is giving me a 1.69 dmax with 
EEM and
> MIS high-load matte black (like Museum black).  (By the way, I 
have a Museum
> black 220 universal cart I'll sell for below cost.)  The second 
best dmax
> appears to be with the Photo Glossy paper setting -- 1.65.
> 
> Third, I have persistent micro-banding with radical partitioning 
curves.  It
> did not show up with the OEM inks, and it appears to be less with 
more mild
> curves.
> 
> Does anyone know if the shaking of the Epson stand has any effect 
on the
> print quality?

$500.00 for the damn thing and it shakes uh?! Merde! I can't help 
there, I couldn't afford the stand so it's on my counter.

> 
> I will probably load the new MIS UC-clone-based vm into the 
machine in a
> week or so.  The original vm worked well in 7000 and 9000 
printers, so I
> assume it'll be fine in the 7500 -- we'll see.  The MIS UC-clone 
inks are
> excellent for midtones.  The warm end is not quite sepia, but 
better than
> the old vm inkset, and it'll still go plenty cold.
> 
> In the meantime, I'm seeing whether the dual-k vms will work if I
> re-formulate it to get rid of the weak diluted Epson Arc black.

Can you get base liquid for the UC-clones? That's what I need most 
right now.

Steve
> 
> Paul
> http://www.PaulRoark.com