Digital BW, The Print

I played around with the Epson RIP a week or so ago.  I also tried DeWolfe's
recommended settings from the Camera Arts article, and using Paul Roark's
step wedge, the 10-20% patches look purple, 25-30% look brown, and 35-60%
look purple as well under tungsten light.

I too wonder how extensive DeWolfe's testing was.

I also evaluated the prints for metamerism by turning the print back and
forth between window light and my office flourescent light.  I saw the print
shift from green in the daylight to magenta under flourescent (same as I see
when I print B&W with the Epson driver).  To my eye, the Epson RIP makes
absolutely no improvement to metamerism over the Epson driver.

The only method I have seen to date for eliminating metamerism with the 2200
on B&W prints is to use ImagePrint.  It does a beautiful job of it and
creates very neutral B&W prints over the entire range of tones.

Epson's PDF manual is not very helpful.  I was surprised to see that it is
63 pages long!  It's full of bits of wisdom such as the following about
print speed:

"Change to a faster CPU or add more RAM.  Complex jobs
that use a large number of fonts will process faster on a faster
CPU with more RAM.  We recommends [sic] that you change
to a faster CPU first, then add more RAM, if necessary."

I've also noticed a peculiarity.  I had an image with extra white space
around it.  When I printed it using the Epson RIP, it actually "printed" the
white parts!  I mean the print head travelled across the paper and the paper
advanced at the same rate as if it was actually putting down ink.  I looked
at it under a loupe and confirmed that it didn't put down any ink.  It must
just be a bug or "feature" of the RIP.

--Tom


----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Palmieri" <pcpalmieri@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, February 17, 2003 6:17 PM
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Epson 2200 RIP: further results?


>
> It would be most helpful is others who are using the 2200 RIP would
> post their experiences with it. I am especially interested to learn why
> it is so slow when choosing "color" in liew of Black and White.  The
> other list is the Epson 2000 list at Yahoo. There are no other posts
> there that I can recall.
>