Digital BW, The Print

Hi Ferdinand,

We have done BO printing on a 2100. It works OK, density is good, but it 
has metamerism, as the 2100 driver (for Windows, v5.30 at least) doesn't 
actually do black only at photographic quality levels. It does a full 
colour greyscale on anything but plain paper, so no advantage there. The 
answer is to install the 2200 driver (v5.40), which does allow proper 
photo BO on the 2100. It will warn you about poor quality when you try 
to print BO at photo settings, but will carry on when you cancel the 
warning. We haven't been able to get the Status Monitor to work with the 
2100 on 2200 driver, but the prints are fine, following Clayton's 
settings. They are warmer than the screen view, but densities are pretty 
right.

Your problems are not inherent in doing BO on a 2100, so some detail 
somewhere must be going wrong. Good luck with fixing it!

Colin

ferdinand_paris wrote:

> First of all thank you to all those who have read my posts and taken
> the trouble to think about the issue and reply.  There are two
> problems we have in trying to resolve the issue.  
> 
> 1.) - I can't show you the physical prints.  When I say the BO print
> is lighter, I'm not talking about a little bit lighter and I'm trying
> to finesse the image, I mean a ***LOT*** lighter.  I really don't
> think it is the sort of difference that can be deal with by curves.  
> 
> To illustrate the difference, I've resized and converted the master
> file to sRGB for web viewing, and put it up at 
>   http://asia.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/ferdinand_paris/my_photos
> 
> I then converted it to CYMK, extracted the black channel, and have put
> that there as well for comparison.  This is reasonably close to what
> the BO print from the master RGB image looks like.  I haven't tried to
> finesse these images for screen viewing - both might be a touch dark -
> they are only intended to illustrate the order of magnitude of the
> difference.
> 
> 2.) - we are using different driver versions, so you can't replicate
> my exact circumstances. 
> 
> Isn't there anyone on this list who has tried BO with a 2100 (rather
> than a 2200)?  I'd be satisfied that the problem is something other
> than the driver if this were the case.  I might start a separate
> thread and ask.
> 
> Clayton made the point that once the image is in grayscale format,
> there isn't any other channel to print.  That is true while still
> inside PSCS.  However as Ernst pointed out, "The Epson driver is an
> RGB type that will always do a hidden RGB>CMYK conversion (in color
> mode) on any file that will be printed in color mode, even on a CMYK
> file. The last will first be converted to RGB and then again to CMYK
> internally."
> 
> If I try and print a grayscale image using the full colour inkset,
> then it has to do a conversion to CYMK.  The question is, what does it
> do in black mode?  Ernst said that a grayscale file should be kept as
> a grayscale file by the Epson driver, but it sure don't look like it
> to me.
> 
> I'll think about Clayton's suggestions to try different profiles. If
> it were a mere case of finessing the print, I'd be trying some of
> these things myself.  But the difference really is **huge**.  I don't
> know where to start to bridge such a gap.
> 
> Thanks again.
> 
> F_P
>