Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Loring Palleske 
<lorpal@m...> wrote:
> That is at the pixel level only. 1/300 th of an inch is very small. 
> very high quality magazines publish at 175 lpi (which is the realm 
you 
> are entering into).

1.   It's an apples-and-oranges comparison - halftoning can use 
continuously varying dot sizes but the printer can't.

2.  I certainly ***HOPE*** that a print on an inkjet printer looks 
better than a high-quality magazine!     Anyone with good eyesight 
can easily see the halftone pattern in the very finest art-magazines 
and coffee-table art books.  

> Add to that the fact the epson uses variable droplets
> (I believe 3 sizes) and even more tones are possible.

Can you show us any evidence of variable droplet size on the 2200 for 
one ink and one resolution setting?    The only actual evidence I've 
seen of variable droplet size is between different resolution 
settings, i.e., comparing one print made at 360 with one made at 2880.
Here's a sample scan from a 2200 at 2880, using black only:  
  http://studio-nelson.com/inkjet/ijimages/edbo1a.jpg
Note that all the drops are the same size.

There's a very simple "real world" test you can do.  Print out a 0-
255 wedge, Black Only, at 2880 and ask people to examine it 
CRITICALLY.   I tried this with 2 categories of viewers:
1.  Laymen - my wife is a musician so I distributed the test sample 
among her musician friends who come to our house for recitals.
2.  Specialists -  I'm an engineer who writes image-processing 
software.  I've passed samples around among my colleagues.
BOTH groups found the transitions in tone to be very textured.

Fans of BO should ask themseves this:  If BO is so acceptable, why do 
people spend tons of money for separate grayscale printers and 
hextone inks and RIPs and profilers and all that other gear since BO 
is free and comes with the printer?