Digital BW, The Print

Everyone,

I've just spent the evening printing two 6x9 prints of
the same image for a list member - one via piezography
driver and one via Black Only.  

As it has been a while since I have printed actual
side by side comparisons of images created with
differing workflows, I was interested to see the
results as I have been doing this for a while now.  

The first image was printed via the  piezography/R9
driver with eboni in the black position.  The results
were as good as many of us have come to expect from
this software - it was a nice smooth image with
excellent quality.  But, it was terribly slow, yada
yada...

The second print using Eboni black only truly suprised
me.  Before today I had never realized that you can
print at 2880 dpi with the 1280 in black only mode (I
have always used the default heavyweight matte setting
that only allows a 1440 setting).  So, I just switched
the paper setting to "photo paper" and was allowed to
choose the 2880 dpi setting.  The added resolution
completely smoothed out the ramp.  Sure the 5% still
looks "dotty" but the warm tone of the Eboni combined
with the luminosity of BO was quite remarkable, and I
really don't care much about the dots - besides this
has a rich photogravure feel that is just amazing.

This may be old news, but I am just tickled at the
quality that can be achieved by "returning to the
basics."

When showing the images to an "uninformed" viewer,
they picked the BO as superior - and never mentioned
the dots.  So, when I look back on the hundreds of
dollars spent in specialized software and expensive
inks getting me here...

Don

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