Digital BW, The Print

Steve Kale wrote:

>And B&W Mode is Same as Source anyway.
>
>I have been corresponding with Bruce Fraser and he and Jeff are looking at
>doing softproof profiles when they get a printer.  They will likely do for
>each paper one profile for each of the main settings (neutral, cool, warm
>and sepia for each of darkest, darker, dark, normal, light) so 20 profiles
>per paper.  One can already use EyeOne Match to do your own profiles
>following Carl Schofield's workflow (if you had a printer!).  Bruce will be
>using a lot higher patch count than 21 or 51.
>
>I still think the more interesting and relevant issue is profiling the
>luminance axis.  This k3 situation is just like QTR a year or so ago (and
>where black-only is today).  We found a way to soft proof but still did not
>have a way of managing the difference between the workspace luminance
>profile to the printer reflectance profile. The old 'why do my QTR prints
>print "light" and "lack contrast" issue?'.
>
>Epson has loaded into the driver five transforms - darkest, darker, dark,
>normal, and light - but these must only be simple transforms keyed off the
>paper selection.  Thus they take no account of changes in workspace nor
>individual printer differences in linearity.  They certainly won't
>accommodate a change to the inks.  Think of them as Black-only work flow
>with five preset curves to choose from.  The smarter money will figure out
>if there is a way to manage the luminance/reflectance compression with a
>(greyscale) ICC output profile a la Roy's generics for QTR.  The only issue
>I can see is in how Epson applies the transforms. Specifically, if they are
>simply always applied to incoming file data then data already adjusted by a
>ICC profile conversion that was intended to alter the file data to reflect
>the print space would then still be transformed again. Then you're stuck
>with what Epson has hard coded and it will become progressively out of date.
>
>Steve
>  
>
Yes, the B&W driver may be less sophisticated than I figured out it 
could be.

BTW I'm not familiar with the R1800 driver but in the 4800 driver there 
are two B&W modes, Advanced B&W and what they simply call Black. It 
would be very inappropriate if the last isn't Black Only printing. 180 
nozzles at 3.5 picoliter and possibly 8 pass like the 10000 firmware 
upgrade had must deliver a nice BO print. Clayton are you there ? 

I do not see the same option in the 2400 driver. Nor am I able to get to 
Advanced B&W in that driver but I have little time right now.

Ernst