Digital BW, The Print

--This is good, considered reply.  thanks, Antonis.

I am working with the supplied profiles by both developers for the 
inkset and media. I really had not expected that much from QTR, and 
was surprised at the result, so decided to post my findings in this 
forum. 

Indeed, I could work with IP on the profile issue; they've really 
been quite supportive. But they have a very up-to-date profile for 
the media I used for the test, and I doubt that they wouold see fit 
to tweak it further.  I was just interested in the side-by-side 
comparison of the "out of the can" profiles that each of the 
developers supplied. 

I realize also that I have much to learn in all this.

Jack

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Antonis" 
<antonisphoto@y...> wrote:
> Jack,
> 
> I don't know how long you've  played around with these printing
> methods, but the right profile is really  key to succesful bw 
printing.
> The big advantage of QTR, IJC/OPM and StudioPrint is that 
> they all offer ways for the end user to make or tweak a profile 
> to suit their personal preference or equipment.
> With IP and others, you have to depend on the company to calibrate
> the system for you. In fact, with that in mind, IP offers to make 
you a custom
> profile if you send them  a printed target (for inksets they 
support).
>  That takes the work out of your hands but in turn means 
> that you can't tweak things on the fly.
> 
> In order to compare RIPs then, you have to make sure that each is
> running profiles calibrated and linearized to your particular 
system.
> It's for you to choose if you like to do the profiling or have 
someone else
> at a distant location handle it. Depending on that choice, you go 
with the
> appropriate RIP.  All these RIPs can be made to print nearly 
> identical prints. Their differences are far more subtle than your
> print comparisons suggest.
> 
> My recommendation is to go with printing software that not only
> allows you to make your own profiles, but makes the process fast
> and fool-proof. Beyond that, you'll need a good understanding
> of color management in general, just to make things match across the
> whole workflow.
> 
> Antonis