Digital BW, The Print

Michel-

All the desktop RIPs I've worked with (ColorBurst, ImagePrint, IJC/OPM and 
Lyson, and QTR) outperform the Epson driver and do a good job making prints out 
of the box with supplied profiles. My printing has been as large as 22x36, 
using digital files from 35mm through 8x20 film, with the 7600.

Installation, documentation, technical support and workflow features vary 
considerably and, depending on the work you want to do, may or may not be 
important. Features have to be carefully considered.

I think one might distinguish between solutions that are as "plug and play" 
as possible, and those that allow you to get under the hood and exercise more 
control. And, if you're attracted to the latter, what approaches are used and 
how easy is it to master? The Epson C86/EZ ink combination, for example, is 
truly plug and play (and, in my opinion, a great way to leave the OEM printing 
path and get started in quadtone printing). The "black box" OEM print driver 
isn't cracked open; one uses either the controls available in the print driver, 
or those available in Photoshop, to alter the data reaching the black box.

On the other end of the spectrum you have a RIP like ColorBurst that replaced 
the OEM black box with an architecture that supports the creation of custom 
printing profiles for very accurate grayscale and color printing with the same 
printer and ink set. This requires not only learning the RIP, which is 
straight forward, but also purchasing and learning to use the hardware and software 
necessary to build the profiles (or pay someone else to do this for you, which 
is always an opinion).

Between the two you have RIP's like QTR and IJC/OPM. They have different 
printer support, documentation, procedures for profiling and linearization, 
technical support, and interfaces (both, in my opinion, are gems; very easy to use). 
You can get under the hood with either. You'll definitely see differences in 
prints between the two, but both do an excellent job of establishing a quality 
baseline.



Bill Kennedy
Associate Professor of Photocommunications
St. Edward's University
512/448-8680


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]