Digital BW, The Print

> From: bradmol99 [mailto:bradmol99@...]
>
> Is the Epson 2200 any good for making high quality B&W prints?
> I see alot here about the 1280.  Is this because the 1280 is a
> better printer for B&W?

The 1280 dye inks certainly have deeper blacks than the 2200 Ultrachromes,
although the photo inks on non-matte paper are quite good.

As to 3rd party inks, you can get a CIS (continuous ink system) for either,
which is great for high volume printing, but I've only heard about high
quality 3rd party cartridge inks for the 1280 so far. Either way, if you
want to reserve a printer for B&W, you might want to consider quadtones or
hextones, or perhaps the Lyson narrow gamut inks, which are slightly colored
inks that let you vary the tone somewhat. I haven't tried them, though.

There are some other differences between the printers, like the fact that
the newer 2200 has a paper cutter and a FireWire interface, as well as
individual ink carts.

As to the output quality, I've found that the 2200 has some strong color
casts when I print B&W with color ink using the stock profiles. At first, I
had a really horrible brass color cast, which later cleared up, which makes
me suspect a driver bug. However, I also suspect that there are enough
unit-to-unit variations in either the printer (I hope) or the ink (I hope
not) that you really need to profile your own printer. That's not based on
having tried more than one printer, only on my belief that if the printers
and inks didn't vary, they'd be able to get the stock profiles closer.
Fortunately, I have profiling gear, and I've been able to get rid of my
color casts. I'm getting nice results now. For color stuff, I got gorgeous
results right out of the box.

--

Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
Paul                mailto:pderocco@...