Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "David B. Brooks"
<fotografx@m...> wrote:
> Steve M.,
> 
> Not according to the documentation that is published in the Ergosoft web
> site.  They state specifically that it is not ICC compliant. As far
as I can
> establish all of the available, commercial RIPS for black and white
printing
> are intentionally proprietary, except of course for the Linux GIMP based
> solution. From my perspective it is a technical solution dictated by a
> business model. That model essentially assumes a delimited market
potential,
> in part reflected by the printers supported, and which offers
limited user
> control or independence. It¹s the Polaroid philosophy now perpetuated as
> much as they can by Epson.

This requires some clarification, which might effect some of your
views. What StudioPrint does for quads is really just an extremely
well executed expansion of features expected in any good RIP. All
these drivers, even the OEM ones, have the ability to partition. They
do it from light cyan to cyan, light magenta to magenta, and with the
UC printers light K to K as well. The good RIPs offer more user
control, not less, by giving the user options in controling those
partitions and other controls as well. All good RIPs offer the user
the ability to linearize each channel, including those made up of a
light and dark component. This is simply density tuning of the driver
per channel, not in the icc data path, also a user control not part of
OEM drivers. ICC profiling is done AFTER the RIP is tuned in this
manner for the particular printer, inkset, and paper being used.
All StudioPrint did was add a user selectable monochrome mode, and add
two more (for now) partitions, a very light black and a very very
light black. And of course like any good RIP, this channel is also
hardware linearizable. This has little to do with any color management
yet. It can be compared to the K only mode in the Epson driver, but
with that K channel partitionable into multiple inks. As you know,
when you select K only in the Epson driver, color management in the
driver is disabled, only gamma adjustments are offered. This makes
sense as the entire data path is single channel.
So actually, all that has been done is an expansion of features
already expected in good RIPs, perhaps what is proprietory is how well
it has been implemented.
In fact, the whole system is so user adjustable, it can be made to
work with practically any inkset on any supported printer. You could
even, in CMYK mode, used a 4 part quad inkset for K, and still have C,
M, and Y, inks for toning in a 7 ink printer, or the same with a 3
part K in a 6 ink printer. All kinds of things are possible, and all
icc compatable in multichannel modes. It couldn't be more open.
These are not confinements dictated by a business model, we expect
these features from all good RIPs. The one that is a bit of a black
box with little user control, and a lot of secret "magic", is
ImagePrint, but it's users are quite happy and not complaining, and
even it is fully icc compliant.

> I am not being critical in terms of what it does, or for that matter
what
> several other competitors also do. What I am suggesting is that it
does not
> parallel for instance what color management companies do like Monaco,
> Gretag-Macbeth or ColorVision, which is base their solutions on a
standard
> which interfaces seamlessly with  OS based CMS¹s¹ supporting full user
> independence after purchasing the software/hardware.

Actually David, these companies are what are standing in our way of
placing color management in our single channel monochromatic data
path. They offer no way of building single channel luminosity only
profiling. Single channel icc compliant profiles are possible, but not
yet a feature of these apps. I have one obscure app that will make
them, but the printed percentage curves have to be entered by hand,
not measured in. It will also make what it calls a rich black profile
from measured color profiles, paper white, K point, the whole deal,
but this is not what we need.
As soon as one of these profiling apps allows us to build single
channel icc profiles made with our measurement devices, we can profile
any grayscale output device/driver/inkset/paper/etc., and if outputing
from photoshop, select it as our printer profile and be on our way. If
printing to a RIP, not out of an app, we'd simply have to convert and
save before printing, if the RIP or driver is in a currentaly non-icc
compliant single channel mode, as most of these special monochrome
drivers are, or SP in quad mode.
I hope all that makes sense, and if I have misunderstood and gone off
on a tangent, please accept my apology in advance.
Tyler