Digital BW, The Print

> From: sus123452000 [mailto:sus@...]
>
>   To describe the quality I would like to acheive:  I definitely want
> to get significantly better printouts than what I'm getting now from
> my 600 dpi B&W laser printer; and I'd like to avoid the color cast I
> remember getting when I printed grayscale on the HP photosmart printer
> I had a couple years ago.  I'd like to acheive the quality you might
> see in a photography book of black and white photos.  I also like the
> idea of printing on paper like the photography books would use --
> thin, smooth, somewhat shiny paper (somewhere in between plain,
> everyday copy paper and thick heavy photo paper).
>
> Does such a printer exist, that:
>
> -prints B&W without ugly color casts (and without time-consuming
> adjustments and having to experiment with printing and fine-tuning
> each photo)
>
> -approaches the quality of book-printed B&W photographs
>
> -doesn't require the most expensive, photo-quality paper to get these
> results
>
> -does a decent job printing the text along with the photos
>
> -costs maybe $100 to $300 (possibly more if it were a printer whose
> supplies were especially cheap)
>
> -is not extremely expensive to use.  "Extremely expensive," to me,
> would be using the special Quad grayscale inks, in prefilled
> cartridges, and printing on photo-quality paper.  (Bulk Quad ink that
> I'd fill myself, and a mid-range paper, might be acceptable),

The easiest way to get good B&W without color casts is to buy a color
printer, and then only use the black ink. The problem is that in lighter
areas, the dots are further apart than if you mixed color inks, so the
result is more grain. But it doesn't sound like your prints need to be
absolutely razor-sharp, so this might be a good way to go.

Also, in my experience, the main visual difference between the expensive
paper (e.g., Epson Premium Luster or Enhanced Matte) and the cheaper stuff
(e.g., Epson Photo Quality Inkjet Paper) is that you don't get such dark
blacks on the latter. If you don't need real knock-you-on-your-butt blacks,
then you can get away with the cheaper stuff. It'll still be as good as a
magazine image.

The Epson C84 may be sufficient for your needs. It's only a four-color
printer, but if you print black-only, you don't care. Alternatively, any day
now the Epson R800 will be out. It's much more expensive, but has an
exremely small dot size, lessening the grain. You can probably get a good
idea of how they'll perform by carefully examining a sample print.

--

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