Digital BW, The Print

Owen,

since you brought it up, and Robert already chimed in, here is my take on IJC. 
I should say up front that I have no business arrangement with bowhaus who 
makes the software, but I have been involved as beta tester.

In my opinion Inkjet Control heralds a new era in bw inkjet printing by giving 
the printmaker  better control than we ever had even in  those Iris behemoths 
of yesteryear.  Being able to chose which ink nozzle fires and precisely 
controlling how much ink it lays down for a given digital value in a grayscale 
file is simply awsome. We are now free to mix and match inksets as we please 
and fine tune performance on a day-to-day or  paper -to-paper basis without 
relying on canned profiles .

Given the $200 price, while it may appear a bit expensive to desktop users 
who are used to plug-in prices, it is a huge boon to 7/9000 series owners. The 
present release supports prints up to 36" long. This is a limitation expected to 
be overcome in the future, but for now it means that a 24 x36 print can be 
made on a 7000 and a 44x36 on a 9000. Not bad for a couple of hundred 
bucks. Because of this limit, the company doesn't claim to support the 9000, 
but the software runs the printer just fine.

The other amazing innovation is a feature called the blender.  It makes it 
possible to choose two profiles and make a print using a blend between the 
two that can be adjusted via a slider in 1% increments.  As a result, I was able 
to make one 2200 profile with only the gray and black (MK) , and another 
using those two plus cyan. Since the UC  gray/black by themselves are 
extremely warm, making a "cool" profile and then blending the two allowed 
me to fine tune the print color to whatever I thought was "neutral".  Of course 
this doesn't overcome the fact that a black and a single gray won't ever 
produce as smooth a highlight dot as using 2 or 3 grays, but the feature can 
be used on 6 color machines where one or two "toners" can be loaded in 2 
positions with 4 more available for a black and 3 grays. Needless to say, 
those who like darkroom-style selective cross-toning (say warm highlights, 
cool shadows) will find this very easy to do and control, since the profiles to be 
blended are user-defined. 

Some caveats for first time users:  I believe that if you have a print of a perfect 
scale (which the company may supply as part of  the release package), you 
can make a pretty decent profile by eye.  By using supplied profiles as a 
starting point, that shouldn't be too difficult.  However, I find it faster and better 
to do the job using a densitometer.  

Considering that profiles can be shared, I foresee that as more people begin 
to use IJC, we'll see a lot of profiles changing hands. To that end, I set up a 
folder for this list under IJC (Files section) in order to help with the exchange.  
People with densitometers  can then share their profiles with those that don't  
have one.  I would say that first time users, in general, should allow for a bit of 
a learning curve. Unless you can use one of the shipping profiles, making 
your own may take some getting used to.  I say it's worth it down the line, 
considering the benefits - your mileage may vary, of course.


There are other aspects of IJC that we can discuss as well as changes we can 
all suggest  for future releases. I'll leave those for the time when more people 
here have the software and can participate. According to bowhaus, shipments 
should begin next week (for now Mac OS 9).

Antonis










--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "owenpevans" 
<owenpevans@r...> wrote:
> InkJet Control SoftwareHi all,
> I received this today and thought some of you may be interested!.
> 
> Owen P. Evans