Digital BW, The Print

I'm just learning about this RIP and it makes me a bit nervous to 
make statements with all you folks reading this but here goes.

The RIP allows only two dpi choices using EAM, 720by720 and 1440by720.

I'm using a USB port and its working fine.

With fear and trembling I tell you I see negligible metamerism in 
greyscale. This is a major thing.

My screen is profiled at 6500 deg. and the print from the RIP does 
not quite match my screen -- my screen is cold-neutral and the print 
is warm-neutral. I suspect this can be fixed one way or another, 
we'll see.

If I hold two identical prints both printed at 1440dpi next to each 
other, one using the standard Epson driver and the other using the 
RIP I notice no difference in resolution or clarity. The standard 
print is cold-neutral (like my screen) but with hue shifts across 
tones and unacceptable metamerism. The RIP print is warm-neutral with 
no hue shifts across tones and virtually no metamerism. ImagePrint 5 
wouldn't work on my WIN98SE computer so I can't compare results to 
that RIP. In my opinion, Cone's inks and Pieziography still yield a 
better print (don't know about MIS stuff, haven't tried them yet). 
Piezotones with Pieziography give superlative results but its 
expensive and the last time I ordered ink from them it took a month 
to get. And the Pieziography system is not available for the 2200.

Photo black is allowed on non-matte papers. Epson Premium Luster is 
allowed to go up to 2880by1440 with photo black but I haven't tried 
it yet.

The RIP is treated as just another printer in Photoshop. When you 
print, you print to the RIP instead of directly to the 2200. "Epson 
Stylus 2200RIP" shows up on your printer list. Simple.

A 63 page PDF user's manual is included on the RIP CD. 48 pages are 
dedicated to installation and troubleshooting and 15 pages to what 
things are that are displayed on your screen. These 15 pages tell you 
virtually nothing; for example, there's a field on the RIP 
labelled "greyscale control". Wow, you say, that's an important 
control. Here's what the manual says about it, "Specify the data to 
be printed using only black ink when you are printing the grey part 
of color data." Huh, that's it? Yup, that's it, see what I mean?

Somebody asked if I would make a post listing steps how the RIP is 
used. I would be happy to if you could be more specific, but 
remember, I'm still learning this thing and I'm certainly not an 
expert on RIPs.