Digital BW, The Print

hi chip.... as far as i can tell, steve kale and clayton jones are 
right, and that what you are seeing is a b&w print using colored 
inks (cyan and magenta) along with the black.  there have been 
reports in the yahoo forums of people printing with true grayscale 
and also of getting perfectly neutral b&w prints with the R800, but 
that hasn't been my experience.  for the most part, i have seen 
the cool toned black and white that you're describing.  looked at 
in daylight these can be quite neutral looking, but not under 
artificial lights.  mine, for the most part, are violet to cyan tinged.  
as you say, not unpleasant :-)

ed rudolph


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, 
"chipcarterdc" <chipcarterdc@h...> wrote:
>  I printed 2 pics today w. the R800: one B&W using black ink 
only, and one 
> color, both on Premium SemiGloss.   As to the black-only 
grayscale print -- I'm 
> a bit perplexed.  When I printed black only on the 2200, I found 
that the prints 
> had a strong warm brownish tone.  This print doesn't look like 
that at all -- it 
> does have a tone that is not "neutral", but it tends toward 
purple, not brown, 
> and isn't displeasing.  It looks, in terms of tone, like a fairly 
heavily toned 
> selenium print, but not so heavily toned that you look at it and 
say it's purple. I 
> can't remember if the black-only prints I did on the 2200 were 
with the matte 
> black or photo black, so that might account for the difference.  
Does anyone 
> have a black-only print using photo black ink handy, and can 
you comment on 
> the tone?
> 
>  In terms of image quality w. black only, no complaints -- I don't 
see any dots in 
> the highlights and the image is nice and sharp.  Admittedly, it 
wasn't an image 
> that had a wide swatch of sky or anything.  I guess this finding 
isn't surprising, 
> given the R800's small droplet size.