Digital BW, The Print

For: Mike Botelho

> Also, there's the upcoming Epson 4000 that will supposed have drivers
> that will handle B&W better. (Will this mean new drivers for the
> 2200/7600/9600 that also do better?) Plus, having Photo Black and
> Matte Black available as a software change makes it all the more
> viable as a printer for both color and B&W. (Though I'm unsure if
> I'd be willing to pay that much more than the 2200 for a few extra
> inches. At that point, why not just spend a bit more and go with the
> 7600 and get an impressive size increase, I think, maybe.)

I have a 7600 and am printing with ImagePrint. First, my take on 
ImagePrint: I am very happy with it -- B&W is spot-on neutral without 
metamerism, and the TintPicker allows for subtle "toning" of the print 
if you want to make the prints, say, warmer or have a selenium-toned 
look. In my view the results are as good as B&W prints I previously 
made using Piezography. For color prints, I have found the ImagePrint 
paper profiles to be excellent obviating the need and cost and bother 
of having custom profiles made -- at least this seems to be the case 
for the 7600 and 9600 printers whose manufacturing tolerances, i.e., 
variability between individual printers, seem to better than those of 
the 2200. If you use a good number of different papers  -- apparently 
ColorByte will profile any paper free that for which there is not 
already a profile -- this means that you can save a lot of money that 
you would have spent on custom profiles. The ColorByte color profiles 
are a lot more accurate than the canned Epson profiles and a little 
better in color, particularly in terms of shadow detail, than the free 
Bill Atkinson profiles available for the 7600/9600 which themselves are 
excellent. (The current version of ImagePrint has a "slider" that 
allows you easily to control how much shadow detail or shadow 
compression that you want).

As for the 7600, it is an excellent printer but the problem is that it 
costs about $80 in wasted ink to change between Photo Black ink (used 
for printing on glossy-type papers) and Matte Black ink (used for 
printing on matte papers). For me this is a real problem. When I first 
got my 7600, I started using Photo Black and Epson Semi-Matte paper (a 
glossy-type paper) and eventually printed most of the prints for my 
forthcoming exhibition using this ink and paper combination. When I 
used up the Photo Black I switched to Matte Black and started printing 
on EEM and Photo Rag. However, when I needed to complete the rest of my 
exhibition prints I found that the matte color prints did not look as 
good (in terms of "sharpness", saturation and depth of the blacks) as 
the Photo Black/Semi-Matte paper combination; and this view was 
confirmed by every one who saw the prints, which means that I need to 
change back to Photo Black and Semi-Matte paper to complete the prints 
for my exhibition. The trouble is that B&W prints with Photo Black and 
Semi-Matte don't look very good and exhibit horrible "bronzing." This 
problem is solved by the new 4000 printer which has both Photo Black 
and Matte Black which allows you to change between glossy-type and 
matte paper at will without any cost. The 2200 involves insignificant 
ink waste in changing black inks but the small size of the ink 
cartridges means that ink costs are very high. With the 4000 you can 
use the same 220ml cartridges that the 7600/9600 use. (Incidentally, I 
found that with the Ultrachrome inks both B&W and color prints looked 
somewhat better on EEM than on Photo Rag.)

 From the above you can see that there is a great advantage in the 4000 
if you want to print both B&W  and color which, with the papers 
currently available, means that you need to use both the Photo Black 
and Matte Black, unless you like the way the color prints look on matte 
paper, and some people do.

In my case, I already have the 7600 and I like to be able to make 24x36 
inch prints but the only hope on the horizon right now is that there 
might be a new glossy-type paper which is not subject to bronzing for 
B&W prints. There is one new paper, Oriental Graphica FB Glossy, that 
may have such characteristics according to a July posting by Robert 
Morrison, and I'll be interested to see what results people have with 
this paper. In the meantime, does anyone have any solutions for 
printing good B&W with Photo Black?

--Mitch/Paris