Digital BW, The Print

Peter,

There's not more to hear at this point. I'm spending time printing
on my 2200 through QTR using the Epson UltraChrome inks getting
to understand what I can expect from this setup. The output is 
so close to metamerism-free and dotless on EEM paper that I'm
thrilled. (It looks like it warms very slightly under 
incandescent lighting, and I need a loupe to see the dots at
5%.) I can mix a warm and cool curve and get pretty much any 
range of tone I care about. I haven't felt the need to take 
advantage of Roy's offer to share the gory details of calculating
dot size transition points. From a user's point of
view, that's truly esoterica. What I've got works fine, once I
changed one constant in the QTR code and recompiled.

Next for me will probably be getting a set of UltraTone carts
from MIS. I'd like to understand what difference a set of real  
quad inks make, though I'm a little nervous about switching
inks--listening to the discussion so far, I can't get a 
definitive reading from the group on the risk of a bad 
(i.e. clog-inducing) interaction between the residual
UltraChrome in the pipes and on the parking pads and the 
Ultratone inks... in a 2200, not a 1280.

So that's where things stand for me. I'm very happy with QTR.
It's not a shrink-wrap solution, it requires some learning on the
part of the user, but that's good for me. I like that. I understand
more about B&W printing because my hands are a little dirty. Going
through the calibration exercises alone taught me things I didn't 
know. There is a level of precision available to me now that I 
had no way of getting to when I was printing directly from 
photoshop through the Epson driver. 

The active part of my learning curve right now is bulletproofing 
the printing process from Linux so I don't screw up (like I did 
this weekend) and print a tif file with an alpha channel and 
wind up with an all-black print. And getting the centering of 
images to come out correctly. And making sure the output 
matches my screen. Etc.

-David

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Peter Miles 
<P.Miles@m...> wrote:
> Roy Harrington Wrote
> Message: 14
> Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 18:03:30 -0000
> 
> <major snip>
> .... If you interested in the gory details of this I'd be glad to 
share it
> offline.
>   Roy
> <end snip>
> 
> 
> Hi Roy and David 
> I have been following your thread with a lot of interest.
> I would like you to continue this discussion on the Digital B&W 
list.
> 
> I'm just starting wrapping my head around getting the best out of 
roy's QTR
> and find your discussion very useful.
> 
> 
> Much thanks
> Peter Miles