Digital BW, The Print

I tried to get a demo version from Colorbyte and was told that they 
don't do this any more because of the level of technical support 
they'd need to provide.  However, I was told that there is a 30 day 
money back guarantee if you're not happy, so if this is the holy 
grail of B&W printing then you just need to decide if 500 bucks is 
worth it and give it a try.  

Peter, perhaps the metamerism is a function of a specific ink, rather 
than the "inks" in general?  Someone else mentioned (so it must be 
true) that some driver/RIP didn't use one of the magentas in order to 
reduce metamerism.  Now, the black ink is actually really black, but 
the light black is actually sepia toned for some reason, and so maybe 
IP5 only needs to use Cyan(s) in order to adjust?  Maybe it's just 
using Black, Light-black(sepia), and a small amount of cyan in order 
to get the neutral grays?  This could also explain why the output is 
supposedly a little rougher than the Epson driver, although that 
could also be down to the dithering algorithm used...

My theory (i.e. Internet fact) is that the main metamerism involves 
the magenta ink, which would be why the shift goes between magenta to 
green through grey in the middle.  I mean, why would a "bad" reacting 
yellow make the image go magenta?  Surely images would get more 
yellow or more blue depending on the light-source?

I'm seriously considering getting IP5 and then sending it back if I 
don't like it.  

Finally, I got an answer from Colorbyte on a Saturday within hours 
and they don't seem to be sleazy at all.  I do think it's odd that 
they won't send test prints, but if they have a money back guarantee, 
then you can do your own testing!  :)

  Matthew

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Shire,Stanley" 
<sshire@c...> wrote:
> As a customer and user of IP (with no fiscal interest at all in
> COLORBYTE (no S on the end), I can say that they are far, far from
> sleazy. They are extremely responsive to customers and, as a small
> company, can actually do fixes very quickly. With IP4 and some (not 
a
> lot) of Epson 10000CF printers, there was a banding problem. They
> actually wrote a new driver for this small batch of printers in a 
very
> short period of time.
> Based on your messages, I'm not sure if you are generally suspicious
> (which is a good thing since it's your $$)or just not sure about new
> stuff.
> It would seem that the simplest solution would be to get the demo
> version of Imageprint from Colorbyte and try it. You can't download
> this; they'll send it.
> S.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: peter nelson [mailto:peter@s...] 
> Sent: Sunday, February 09, 2003 10:00 AM
> To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [Digital BW] Re: WHEN will we get simple, reliable BW
> printing??
> 
> At 12:19 AM 2/9/2003 +0000, 
DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> wrote:
> >I am using the 2200 for both color and grayscale. My results with
> George
> >Lepp's profiles are very good. My results with Imageprint 5 are
> spectacular.
> >Lovely tonal scale, very smooth transitions and minimal (almost not
> there)
> >metamerism. I have carried a print to various places (tungsten,
> OttLite,
> >fluorescent (most varieties), daylight, etc.
> >I am really considering IP5 as a part of the 2200 "system."
> 
> Since metamerism is a property of the ink, how/why would a RIP
> or a profile be able to fix it?
> 
> I've been reluctant to invest in a RIP that costs almost as much
> as the printer, since the real purpose of a RIP is not color
> adjustment, but managing and automating a commercial print shop.
> Most of the features that you're paying for in the IP RIP have
> no relevance to amateur photography printing.   But in any
> case I still want to hear how a RIP fixes metamerism.
> 
> Also, I contacted Colorbytes to ask where i could see sample
> output and they said they don't "do" that.  It made them seem
> rather sleazy to me.
> 
> BTW, I've also talked to other people who say that got better
> results with the Epson grayscale balancer than with the IP
> RIP, and other people who say they they don't see any
> metamerism with the default Epson profiles.
> 
> ---peter
> 
>