Digital BW, The Print

ADJUSTMENT CURVES ON THE EPSON 1270 PRINTER

I purchased my 1270 epson printer off of eBay and installed the The 
MIS  UT2 and ebony black  cartridges for black and white printing.   
MIS recommended the UT2 cartridges for the 1270.     I used epson 
archival matte paper. 

With no curves the prints were ok.  Once the curves were loaded into 
Adobe Photoshop the prints came came out posterized.    Even when 
switching from 8 bit to 16 bit mode,  there has been the problem with 
posterization.   I have been able to control this problem by 
adjusting the opacity of the layers that the curves are downloaded 
into.    Could there be a problem with my settings   or could this be 
a problem for this particular printer?   

How I Solved the Problem and What do You Think About this Technique? 


Here is how I solved the posterization problem for the epson 1270 
printer.   Curves loaded from Paul Roarks curve collection were put 
on an  ajdustment layer in Photoshop.  Opacity of the curves layer 
was put at 33% or lower. By doing this I could warm or cool my prints 
to a small degree.  I kept a second curve of my own from which I 
adjusted the tonal scale of the print.  This may be a more limited 
way to adjust warmness and coolness of prints,  but it does appear to 
work.   It may be that to get the full potential of these inks,  a 
newer and better 1280 printer would be better than the 1270.   All 
the pieces of the puzzle are not quiet together yet.  I may regret 
that I did not get a 1280 and decided to save money.

I have checked the forum and little has been said about using 
adjustment curves and varying them with opacity layers.  To my 
knowledge you should be able to just load the adjustment curve and it 
should work fine.  I have been able to make some good prints.  Its 
consistent.  Could it be that the printer has a bad cart, the printer 
has a problem or the settings are not quiet right?   Has anyone had a 
similiar situation with a 1270 printer?

I like the idea of making 2 separate layers for curves, one for 
adjusting the tonal scale and the other for adjusting the warmness of 
the print.  Is there a reason not to do this?   

Is it possible to make decent glossy prints.  I read through some 
forum discussions.  Paul Roark does not seem to endorse it.  Are 
there other options than matte that seem to work ok?


Thanks.
Dave