Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Clayton Jones" 
<cj@c...> wrote:
> Hello Stuart,

> and have concluded that in order to have no dots
> I'd have to, in some comination: pay a lot more 
> money, endure more hassle and tribulation, and 
> have prints with less luminance and in many cases
> less Dmax. 

I agree about the money and hassle - BO printing is easy and 
cheap.   3rd-party BW inksets/drivers or professional RIPs are 
expensive, and involve a lot more hassle.    But I don't understand 
why DMAX should be an issue.   DMAX is the ratio of the brightest to 
darkest tone you can reproduce.  That means the brightness of the 
paper where there is no ink, to the blackness of the paper where 
it's 100% ink.  So DMAX should a function of the paper and whatever 
the black ink is.  whethere there's 0, 1, 2 or 3 ink values in 
between should be a non-issue.  

I use BO printing for proofs that I give to my local pro-lab when 
I'm having a bw image in a TIFF printed to photographic paper, and 
later this month I have two large Epson 2200 BO prints in a show in 
an art gallery in Lowell Mass.  Note, however that the gallery 
prints are on Canson Mi Teintes pastel paper, not inkjet paper, so 
they have some ink spreading which blurs the dots, and the paper is 
not white.