Digital BW, The Print

Sending Paul/Roy money isn't necessarily going to solve these problems.  Remember, these are two individuals that have lives outside of this forum.  And, even though they spend much time doing this stuff, money is probably not the motivator, and dollars don't buy them more hours in a day.  A small company would be required to do all of this on any scale bigger that what is already being done.  Who's going to start/run a small company on $50 donations?
 
Other than the IP solution, individuals need to thoroughly understand and control their own environments to use this stuff.  Roy, Paul, and other contribute mightly to this effort, but I don't expect them to 'idiot proof' the process for me. I pay Colorbyte to idiot proof IP, but if Roy were to port his RIP to PC, I'd be real interested, and expecting that I would have some 'tweaking' of my processes to do.  And then, Roy would get my money instead of Colorbyte.  A CBA here is probably going to reveal that there's very little potential profit in dong this, expecially on a long term basis.  Epson and HP (and maybe other big players) will, sooner than later, have products that solve these problems.  And, as expensive as the big guy's stuff seems to us, their solutions will probably be priced such that most of us will think it's a pretty good deal. 
 
Look at the R800, 7960, 4000 and ask yourself "What are they working on right now that we don't know about?"  The way this technology is advancing, it'll probably in our computer room soon.
 
Tom Baker
Tom Baker


chipcarterdc <chipcarterdc@...> wrote:
Roy: that's good to know. The problem of course is that many of us (well, 
maybe just me) don't have the technical expertise or equipment to be using 
these highly technocal tools (I don't even know what an Eye-One is) to create 
our own profiles. And, no offense intended to anyone, I personally have no 
interest in such technical proficiency -- I mean, I'm not a really "techie" kinda 
guy -- just a photographer. Maybe it's just laziness or intimidation, but I kind of 
think of it like in the wet darkroom -- many people swear that ultimate quality is 
only obtainable by mixing your own developer and coating your own paper 
and negatives. That may or may not be true, but it just wasn't something that 
appealed to me.

None of this is Roy's problem - he's designed a very flexible tool. But it still 
leaves me in a bind. What really needs to happen from my perspective is that 
everyone needs to kick in some $ to buy Roy a 7600, a bunch of grayscale 
inks and various papers so that he can use his technical expertise to benefit 
us all and design a whole buncha curves. Oh, and we need to get Paul a 
7600 too, so he can get the UT7 inkset up and running sooner. :-)

I'm actually only half-joking about the statement above. I mean, think about it: 
I may one day pay Colorbyte $2500 for ImagePrint for the 9600 so that they 
can worry about and develop the technical stuff and I can just make prints. If 
I'm willing to do that, it's not much of a leap to fund Paul or Roy. (Just for the 
record, I'm not giving either of you $2500 on spec. :-) ) But would I send Roy 
or Paul $100 to profile an inkset/paper combo for grayscale inks? Sure. And 
if 50 people did that....




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