Digital BW, The Print

> 1. has anyone seen an ultratone-7 print and compared it to a piezography print?
 > 2. how about Quad RIP? i've seen roy harrington's scans on the web,
 > but i'm still curious to know how the overall print appears in
 > ultratone-7 versus Quad RIP.

I use the UT7 inks myself, with both the Epson driver and with QTR. I 
have also seen numerous Piezo prints in exchanges.

You'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between a well done print 
made with any of these three workflows, but the UT7 inkset has the 
obvious advantage of allowing you to vary the tone of the print from 
cool to strong sepia. UT7 also has great performance on glossy papers. 
That, combined with the much lower prices of the MIS inks makes the UT7 
inkset the obvious choice for me.

The advantage of QTR isn't so much that the quality of the final print 
is any better or worse - it's actually very similar to the Epson driver 
- it's the excellent profiling tools and the very detailed controls over 
each ink position it gives you that makes it worthwhile. If you're into 
making custom profiles, mixing your own inks or just want more control 
of the printmaking process in general then QTR is definitely the right 
tool for the job.

That said, the UT7 inkset and the Epson driver is also much better in 
this regard than it used to be. Paul has done a great job on making the 
inkset easy to use and control - you get excellent prints just using the 
driver controls and no curves, and still have a large selection of 
curves available for various papers if you need that too.

> 3. have people had head clog problems with ultratone inks?

No clog problems for me, but I have experienced some banding problems 
that I've mostly managed to solve. Prints on EEM, Photo Rag, Ilford 
Smooth Pearl and Somerset Velvet all looks excellent with no banding 
now. With BO prints I can still see some slight dither banding, and I've 
also had problems on Condor. Not sure if this was because of the inkset 
or if it was just my printer being difficult.

> 4. do the ultratone cartidges suffer from the same reporting problem as the piezography 
> ones (not reporting accurate ink levels)?

I can't answer that, I'm using refilled Epson cartridges instead of the 
MIS cartridges.

> 5. is it really true that you can just put in the ultratone cartridges without flushing out the 
> ultrachrome inks?

Yes, like Mike said it typically takes 2 cleanings to make the switch.

--
Daniel Staver
http://daniel.staver.no