Digital BW, The Print

DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "mike_nunan"
<mike_nunan@h...> wrote:
snip
> That said, I'm still toying with the idea of switching to ImagePrint 
> for my colour work. I've tried the demo but it's a shame that they 
> chose such a heavy "DEMO" watermark as I found it interfered with 
> assessment of the images and of course it puts you off making too 
> many of them. I'm also troubled by comments I've seen saying that it 
> sacrifices some resolution in comparison to the Epson driver due to 
> the larger dither cell size. Anyway, at the risk of veering off 
> topic, I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of that, as well as the 
> ill-suitedness of the Epson driver for colour work in general.

I've heard no negative comments about the IP dither, this is the first
I've heard about a larger cell size. On the other hand I don't use it
so have not been very attentive to discussions about it's particulars
quirks. We recently did a comparison of B&W output and IP's quad
output looked great in terms of dither and dot size, but it was
non-linear with no linearization capability. That many or may not be
relevant to it's color output. No specific resolution test was done.
The problem with the Epson driver for color is that it is extremely
non-linear and gray balance is completely whacked in it's unprofiled
state using the No Color Adjustment setting. Other settings for quick
and easy use like Automatic or PhotoRealistc are much better but at
the expense of significant gamut loss. So when profiling over the
accepted NCA setting, the software has to do so much wrangling of
color to bring things into line that it's always at some expense. As
Nick Wheeler says "Profiling packages were designed to provide that
last nth of characterization to an already well calibrated system." So
many critical printers use RIPs that can be linearized first, then
profiled.
The now legendary and monumental efforts of Bill Atkinson to make his
profiles for the x600 printers, literally making his own software,
combining other software packages, and measuring  many thousands of
patches, just to come up with profiles that could make the Epson print
reasonably neutral is probably the best illustration of the problems
with the driver. A friend recently got and profiled one of the newer
little Canon's, and it was far superior in it's unprofiled state,
there's no reason why Epson couldn't accomplish the same feat.
Tyler