Digital BW, The Print

Thought I'd let you know how I'm doing with the Ultratone BW inks in my
2100. For those of you who haven't read my earlier posts, what I've done
is to clean and refill old 2100 cartridges with the Ultratone inks and
use them in my printer.

- Results are pretty much consistent with my initial report. Good on
matte papers, not so good on glossy.

- On matte papers I'm getting the most beautiful prints I've ever seen
from my own printer. I'm really happy about that and it's a joy to make
prints with this inkset. 

- Previously I used iProof PowerRIP with the standard inkset to create
BW prints. While it had no metamerism and looked neutral, the dithering
was slightly more coarse than the epson driver and I had to print at
2880dpi to get decent results, which was very slow. Now I can print with
720dpi at high speed and still get nearly dotless prints.

- The resolution of the prints have increased visibly. I can see much
more details than I could previously, and the grain structure of the
picture itself actually shows instead of being masked out by the coarser
dithering of the RIP.

- On matte papers I've been able to create a curve that looks cool all
the way into the shadows. I reported problems with this earlier and it
seems to be due to the extra light black cartridge, making it harder to
get toner ink into the shadow areas.

- I've run through a full set of ink cartridges, so I'm on my second
refill now. I still haven't seen any clogs and I get consistent, perfect
nozzle checks. So far the 2100 seems to be an excellent subject for
refilling.

- I've been using Epson Matte Black instead of Eboni. The Eboni just
doesn't seem match the deep blacks I'm getting with the Epson ink.

- I can easily change back to the standard color inkset at any time,
which I've done a couple of times already. All it takes is a quarter
page of purge pattern and then everything seems normal.

- Still no luck with glossy papers. I get brown shadows and mottling in
dark areas. I tried mixing a neutral black and light black and got much
better results, but I used too much cyan and magenta (about 30%) in the
mixture which lowered dmax significantly and made the ink look slightly
purple. I think if I perfect the mixture I can get good results though,
but I suspect something has to be done about the dark cyan position in
the Ultratone inkset as well. I think the mottling may be because of
interference with this ink and the light black. When time allows I will
do some further experiments with this, but since I print on matte papers
95% of the time anyway I'm in no hurry.

- I'm seriously considering to buy an older mac and IJC to use as a
print server. It's certainly very tempting to use a solution designed
for experimental setups like mine so I could take away the guesswork and
get consistent results. With IJC I would also try mixing some of the
standard ultrachrome colors in some positions and BW inks in others
which I think could be used for interesting tinting effects. I think it
could be worth the hassle of adding yet another computer to an office
that's already crowded with equipment. 
Now, if they would only add support for the 2100...

--
Daniel Staver
http://daniel.staver.no