Digital BW, The Print

jsstapen

>only black ink, the print comes out brownish. 
>Please help! Any advice is greatly appreciated.

There are several options for the Black Only (BO) technique.  First
the inks.  The 2200 comes with Photo Black installed.  This is the
warmest of them all and has the poorest Dmax, so is pretty much
unsuitable for matte papers.

The Epson Matte Black ink is considerably less warm than Photo Black,
and has excellent Dmax.  It makes really nice warm tone prints.

Then there is the MIS Eboni, probably the most popular ink among the
BO users (I'm currently participating in a BO print exchange, and so
far most are using Eboni).  While still a bit warm, it is less warm
than Matte Black and has excellent Dmax.  So right away we have two
color tones to choose from.

Now for the paper.  Photo Rag (PR) pretty much sets the standard for
Dmax and all around beauty, and Eboni BO on PR is a bit less warm than
on EEM.  So with Eboni on PR we have a just slightly warm print.  By
themselves they look neutral.  They only look warm next to a neutral
print.

Now for some really good news.  I've been testing some papers from
Hawk Mountain and have found two that produce prints that can compete
with PR, and (using Eboni), they produce even cooler prints.  The
Merlin Smooth makes a print that looks like my old favorite Ilford MG
II with Dektol, mildly cool, very pretty (my favorite).  The Condor BW
makes a steely cold print that looks like selenium toned Oriental
Seagull.  Really intense, the Ansel Adams look.

(I also tried their Osprey papers - don't bother, they aren't in the
same league)

Another nice thing is that these papers have contrast curves similar
to PR.  This means we can print the same image on all of them without
needing to tweak the image.  So with these three papers we can print
everything from chilly cold to mildly cool to slightly warm

I have also been testing Epson Velvet Fine Art.  It's a gorgeous warm
tone paper with intense Dmax, depth, and similar contrast to the
others.  So that adds a fourth option to the lineup, a full range of
tones to choose from.

All these tests were done using Eboni.  I haven't tried them with
Matte Black yet.

A lot of people prefer the BO technique over the other systems. 
Here's a quote from an email I received today:

 "I see the BO prints I've made on my 1280 as superior 
 in almost every way to what I've printed using the current 
 UT and UT2 inks. Perhaps the most outstanding feature is 
 the clean tonal separation, instead of the greyish flatness
 I usually get when printing with quad/hextones."

You can read more about it on the web site below.

Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm