Digital BW, The Print

David B. Brooks wrote:

> Tyler,
> 
> Thanks for filling me in on StudioPrint RIP. I had sent e-mail to Robert
> Eversole asking for documentation, but never obtained a response. I
> appreciate your perspectives.
> 
> I keep pretty close tabs on what is happening in color management and I
> don\ufffdt think the companies are being obstructionist at all, they just have
> their plates full to meet the demand for color solutions and try to get a
> leg up on the competition.
> 
> Unfortunately I do not see the B&W RIP solutions as being particularly
> viable for the prosumer market, at least as they are presently configured.
> Nor do I see  what a RIP supports as a viable solution to extending CM
> capabilities to cover B&W printing. That\ufffds not because I don\ufffdt believe what
> you say about how it can be done. It has more to do with inherent
> limitations which inhibit growth to a critical mass of consumers that would
> allow a price structure that won\ufffdt inhibit sales growth.
> 
> I also have a bit of personal inhibition, considering StudioPrint only
> supports Windoze. I was exclusively Windows for almost 10 years myself, even
> was founding editor of PC Graphics & Video magazine which was produced on
> Windows in a publishing house with 13 other magazines all produced on Macs!
> After Redmond released Windows 2000 without the planned ICM 3.0 upgrade I
> soon became so frustrated I bought my first Mac.  My shop now has just one
> lone, seldom used IBM graphics system and five Macs.


It is unlikely that Epson will bring a dedicated B&W solution. On 
the other hand Epson did improve the B&W quality of the printers 
over the last 3-4 years both in consumer and pro models. The 
smaller droplet sizes, the extra grey ink, more nozzles for 
better weaving, the better longevity of the prints which is even 
more expressed in the B&W prints than in the color prints.

ICC solutions are available for more neutral B&W prints but the 
RGB profiling of the Epson driver limits the use of those 
solutions. For consistency it is nice to have the linearising of 
ink channels possible in most RIPs, the ink limitation settings 
per channel gives another advantage not found in the Epson driver 
yet.  That could change if someone at Epson would add some extra 
paper settings in the printer menus that are not there to 
increase the gamut as usual but to get consistency in B&W 
printing with the color inkset. A longer black generation, ink 
limitation that increases Dmax for black but limits the yellow 
for less metamerism, grey ink addition to black for boost and 
evenness.  On that a generic RGB B&W profile could be added that 
the prosumer can replace with a custom profile. I don't think 
that an addition like that would make costs much higher on a 
prosumer color inkjet printer. (5 extra paper settings in the 
driver are available for the 10000CF printer that are not made 
for specific papers but were made in view of unspecified papers 
and textiles that would appear on the market one day). There's a 
much larger market for B&W + Color inkjet printers than for B&W 
printers only. R800 technique with the 1.5 droplet but 1 extra 
grey ink will be good enough in hardware for the best B&W prints. 
Three main printer menu choices: color, black and white, black 
only. Not a B&W RIP but like the Epson color driver it could be 
as functional as a RIP in most cases.

QTR on the Mac isn't an ICC solution but its basics are almost 
exactly the same as the B&W ICC solutions on more expensive RIPs. 
I see no reason why one should implement ICC profiles in that 
case as the overhead of colour engine links doesn't improve the 
B&W printing itself and makes custom linearising + profiling more 
complicated and expensive and generic profiles not better.  ICC 
profiling could be used with P2P in Photoshop on the images 
before QTR takes it over but I have tried similar approaches with 
a RIP and do not see the advantage.

RIP solutions for Macs have been limited till OSX appeared, since 
then it has changed somewhat. PCs had a lousy color engine 
implementation not so long ago, that was possibly one of the 
reasons that RIPs with a better color management were made for 
that platform, there were other reasons too. Your inhibition with 
PCs may have been triggered by bad experience in the past, it now 
deprives you of some nice print solutions like Qimage. I do not 
share your view on Vuescan either.  As cheap as Qimage, both 
programs are very capable pieces of software that may differ in 
concept from the expensive ones but on many aspects are equal or 
even better. This based on experience with both, some experience 
with Silverfast and having the Wasatch SoftRip. My requests for 
better B&W solutions for that RIP were ignored by Wasatch Inc, it 
looks like they prefer to make yet another screen pattern for 
silkscreen films, wonder which of the two will be a growing 
market :-)

Ernst