Digital BW, The Print

Steve,

The 7500 is a great machine.  I run mine with quad grays and two toners,
using QuadToneRIP and Mac OS X.  I don't think toners have any detrimental
effect on quality and advantage of variable tone is great.

But I also don't think there's any way to have invisible dots with a 8x loupe
 -- the printer puts out pretty large drops of ink.

I actually ran a five distinct grays system for a while (I've never heard anyone
else do it).  It makes a different -- it is smoother but it's hard to see.
The newer printers with variable dot size can get the same results with
fewer grays.

Roy

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, sdmey4@a... wrote:
> I've been swamping out my work area and throwing out prints from the last 6 
> years. 3 or 4 generations of black and white digital materials and prints. I 
> have prints from a dozen workflows and members of this list over the years since 
> its inseption. 
> Some Comments and observations: 
> 1. If your using color inks and or toner inks you will get dots no matter 
> what printer or work flow you use. This includes the 1160,1280,2200,7600,9600 
and 
> everything in between. I can add that you will need an 8x loupe in some cases 
> to see them but they are there. I'm talking about Rourke curves, Quadtone Rip 
> (QTR), I proof power rip, IP5 image print rip, Brandin/wolfe/randall 
> workflows, BO printing, custom profiles to neutralize color inks(all of them)
> I'm not particulaly picky about dots that can't be seen without a loupe, but 
> I'm glad I don't have them, as at my most recent exhibit opening A well known 
> large format Silver printer was going over my hung pieces with a loupe looking 
> for dots.
> I guess I thought since the original piezo plugin that we where all dotless 
> now and that properly partitioned quads where a common place with all the 
> workflows and rips, but this is not the case with a large percentage of the users 
> of this list working with ultrachrome inks or varible tone quad and hex sets of 
>  inks. These efforts remind me of the time and materials wasted 5 years ago. 
> People get away with it now because of the smaller drop sizes in the mordern 
> epson printers.
> My point is for under 4000.00 you can have state of the art quadtone BW 
> printing, 24inches, no dots even with a loupe,some tint control, any quadtone inks 
> you want, no fuss, no muss. How?
> Buy a used or refurb 7000/7500 and Egosofts Studio print software and 
> Greytag's EyeOne Photospectrometer. For a little more you can have a 9000/
9500 44inch 
> set up.
> I did say for serious quadtone printing :) In general the epson prosumer 
> desktops(1160,1280,2200) are short term machines. That need to tweaked and 
> serviced constatntly for BW printing as evidenced on this list.
> With the masses buying 7600/9600's there are 7000' and 9000's available 
> cheap! 1000.00 and 2000.00 easily. About what you would pay for the new 
4000.(hey,I 
> want one too)
> Think about this too. No chipped carts to deal with in these models, 9000 
> 220ml carts will fit in both, so no CIS headaches, Easy to load yourself) 
> reliable paper transport, even very, very thick papers, and for a technical inclinded 
> person they are relatively easy to work on. Head replacements by the user can 
> be done for 150.00(I haven't done this, but will some day)
> Look this list over and see the frustration with cloggs, paper transport 
> issues, CIS woes, metamerizm complaints, dots, shadows blocking, curves 
unavailble 
> and on and on. You might save youself lots of dollars and grief simply by 
> using a more pro qaulity
> printer like epson's first ones the 7000/7500 and 9000/9500 and dedicate it 
> to BW. Most of the headaches on this list come from color inks or trying to get 
> by cheap and in the end most of you will spend close to the state of the art 
> System I described.
> Oops!  forgot that Studio Print needs a PC,  But think about it  if your 
> serious, and I do realize the budget around here is under 2 k for everything but 
> you get what you pay for.
> Are your scans good enough for the highres dotless prints you will get? 
> Get a 7000-9000 epson while you can, These can be ultra pro quad printers 
> that can only be beat by th x600 7 ink wide format printers have have that extra 
> cart for more tone variety.I don't mean varible tone either, just different 
> tones. Vari toner workflows will have dots. But these(7600/9600's )will cost 
> alot more and have there own set of headaches to deal with. 
> 
> My ramble for the month,
> Steve M.
> 
> 
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