Digital BW, The Print

My suspicion would be that QTR's output is more linear than the Epson
driver, particularly if your setup was hardware linearized.
Therefore, the fact that you prefer that particular file through the
Epson driver only means it hasn't been optimized for QTR.
Softproofing would help you, either a custom dot gain curve made by
eye, or a real icc softproof profile of QTR output. That would help
you get where you want faster, by adjusting your files apropriate to
the more linear output. The fact that one arbitrarily matches your
monitor better than the other is not conclusive. Is your monitor
hardware calibrated? When you say it matches better, are you using
some sort of softproof of the Epson output to compare?
You see the complications here.
The bottom line is that you should be able to tonaly come nearly
indistinguishable between output systems one way or another.
The dmax difference is another issue, but sometimes a conrastier print
only appears to have higher dmax, and I believe the gimp drivers allow
as much ink load and dot size as the Epson driver, Roy could speak to
that.
Tyler


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Chris Hargens"
<chargens@s...> wrote:
> Yesterday I printed an image on my 2200 with QTR (XP) and with 
> Ultrachromes using the Epson driver. As usual, the Epson print 
> exhibited some slight metamerism and the QTR image did not. What I 
> noticed in favor of the Epson print, however, is that it had a 
> somewhat darker black and it more faithfully rendered the contrast of 
> the 85%-100% range of the image vis-a-vis what I see on the monitor. 
> The QTR print went somewhat flat in this range. I've printed a step 
> wedge with QTR -- it's smooth and seems to capture the whole range 
> from black to white. So now I'm wondering what I can do to increase 
> contrast in the darker range and deepen the black. Perhaps a change 
> in dot gain or an adjustment curve applied right before printing? Has 
> anyone had similar experiences?
> 
> Chris Hargens