Digital BW, The Print

John-

I'd invest in a display calibration and profiling kit. The new Monaco Optix 
is getting good reviews. You have to trust your display.

Use the default printing profiles that come with the 4000 and print on Epson 
media. You'll have some really good choices. You'll be printing on the OEM 
path with both matt and glossy surfaces.

If you have issues with grayscale printing, and you most likely will, try 
either the QRT or Bowhaus' IJC/OPM RIP's. These are grayscale RIP's; they won't 
make a color print (although they will make a grayscale print from a color 
file; but that's another story). You can use the OEM print driver for color, the 
RIP for grayscale. Both QRT and Bowhaus provide really good default printing 
curves (not profiles). The Bowhaus linearization function is easier to use and 
it can improve grayscale printing with UltraChrome inks.

Or, when you're ready to purchase the 4000 consider the package that includes 
the ColorBurst RIP. ColorBurst is an excellent professional application; 
you'll have default ICC printing profiles for both color and grayscale printing. 
ColorBurst packages factory linearization files with their profiles (called 
"environments"); not as a dead-on accurate as linearizing your own machine, but 
very close and very useful. The default profiles/environments include a much 
wider range of papers than the OEM print driver and ColorBurst's technical 
support is excellent.

With any of these options you don't have to worry about authoring custom 
printing profiles. That should keep you safely away from as many gizmos and 
doodads as possible!


Bill Kennedy


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