Digital BW, The Print

We've all been there at one time or another. I've used all the color and quad tone inksets ( 
both Lyson's for 4 years ) except Paul's new MIS pigments, and my opinion is as follows.

For the very highest quality monochrome output I would choose either Cone Piezzotone 
carbon pigments or Paul Roarks UT carbon pigment. You can use Quad Tone Rip if you 
want on these but it is not necessary for outstanding monochrome output. These inksets 
represent the state of the art.

But, for simpliciity and if you need to also do color output from your pigment printer, the 
previous post about the new Epson 4000 is probably the best choice as long as the 17" 
width size works for you. If you go this route, and it is a very good route, be sure you have 
a custom profile made for you paper to linearize the color out for clean black and white's 
without metamerism. If you choose to use Roy Harrington's QTR rip you can produce first 
class monochrome work with any of these inksets, with no color shift at all under varying 
light sources. Personally this is the method that probably makes the most sense for 
simplicity and economic considerations.  You can also tone the monochrome prints using 
QTR within that driver.

If you do your homework all of these systems can produce beautiful black and white 
output. I personally use two methods now after leaving the Lyson products because of 
metamerism issues. Piezzography and black only printing using the Epson 10K. When 
using black only output I convert the file to greyscale and use grey 1.8 as a profile. I just 
did a show for the Atlanta airport using this method and they were beautifully rich. 
However when doing BO output it is very important to use a slightly textured paper to hide 
any dithering, I favor Somerset Velvet and Hahnemuhle William Turner. I have also had hit 
and miss results from Enhanced Matte and H. Photo Rag . The big problem with BO 
printing is the lack of a light black and medium light black to fill in those subtle highlight 
areas. Compare this with the best Quad inks and you will quickly notice the difference, 
especially in smaller prints of very subtle quality. BO printing on the smaller printers can 
be abismal though. The 10K lets you get away with it on many projects because of the 
huge head and good driver.

To get simple with all this, Ultrachrome inks on the 4000 or 7600 can do very fine 
monochrome work if it is set up right. This is the method that Nash Editions uses. There is 
always someone to help you in that direction. For the top of the line black and white 
output Quad Carbon pigments by MIS or Cone are the very finest products out there.

john dean