Digital BW, The Print

> > Steve, didn't Joel say he already tried the 7000
> route &found the
> > prints too grainy in 
> > appearance?  Have you avoided this appeaarance?  
> > 
> Yes I guess he did say that Service Bureau prints he
> had done with 
> piezography had grain issues and tone transitions
> where not as smooth. 

Regarding the 7000 vs. 7600 Cone print quality
comparison, I had a couple of 16x20s done at West
Coast Imaging a couple of years ago on their 7000
printer.  I liked the prints very much at the time and
I think the people at WCI do a great job in general
with what ever processes they happen to be working
with.  But when I got my 7600 and printed those same
images, then placed them side by side with the WCI
7000 prints, the quality difference was very apparent,
both in ink dot graininess and tonal scale smoothness.

Recently I had to postpone a large museum show for one
year, due to my printing dilemna.  Before taking that
disappointing decision, I had Larry Dangue at Cone
Editions do some test prints for me, with the idea
that I would have him make the 22x30s and 30x40s for
the show.  I have tremendous respect for Larry and I
think he is both a master printer and a great guy. 
But the quality of the 11x14 proofs we did on CE's
9500 printer was not up to the quality of previous
prints done on my 7600 when it was still running with
Cone inks.  Again, ink dot graininess was noticebly
worse on the 9500 and tonal transitions were not as
smooth.  A third issue also appeared: the 7500 did not
split the sepia and selenium colors in the same way or
as smoothly.  Larry and I experimented with changing
ink percentage settings in Studio Print and we got
closer to the look of my 7600 prints, but it still
wasn't as smooth a split.

I still think Epson could best solve this problem,
maintain their market share and enhance their brand by
coming out with a monochrome solution.  Their black
and gray inks are already fairly similar to Cone inks
and they do not clog.  I know this because I once
linearized Epson UC black and gray in a duotone and
the tonal color was very similar to Cone Carbon Sepia.
 So they could solve the clogging problem easily if
they wanted to.  The problem is getting a big
multinational corporation like Epson-Seiko to listen
to artists.  If they want to bring out a B&W solution
that will serve the needs of this growing community,
they need to involve artists and master printmakers in
the development process.

JP