Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "gradyvillejb" 
<jb1@g...> wrote:
> I don't mind the work - it sort of falls in with what i do for a 
living, so i can write off all 
> expenses etc... Which third party inks would you recommend the most?
> 


Just about everyone here would recommend the MIS UT series inks, but 
it also depends what you want to do. If B/W  with selective tones is 
the major focus, then those would be fine/best. If you want to do B/W 
with selective areas of color, then it gets a little harder (until 
the new printers come out). The new 3 black inks should yield 
slightly better prints than the two blacks of the "current" printers, 
four blacks would probably be better. A driver that is better than 
the Epson drivers (a RIP) would also be a key in repeatable prints, 
with the most control, and therefore should produce the best results. 
Now you can set the point where the different shades mix together 
into one channel, and send jobs in CMYK, or atleast make your output 
profiles in CMYK so that you can control the black generation. With 
good control of the color and black channels, you should be able to 
send an image that has both B/W and color elements within the same 
image, and get completely neutral grays with no metamerism, as well 
as beautiful color. Inks will of course play a major role too, do you 
stay with the OEM inks, or stray onto the path of third party inks. I 
like experimenting so it's third party inks for me, but that's a 
personal choice. And then there are the paper choices, way to many to 
go into...

So what does all this mean... If you want the absolute most complete 
control over the whole process, it would involve a good RIP (about 
$500 USD for the 4X00 printers), good quality hardware 
(spectrophotometer) based profile creation package that is capable of 
making CMYK, or better yet 6, 7, or 8 channel profiles, with a method 
to make a custom GCR curve for the black channel. Now within reason, 
you can put any ink into any channel, control which inks mix and 
where they mix, plus control (as well as possible) the way an image 
gets transformed from its color space, to the printer's color space.

The profiling package for this level of control will cost somewhere 
around $2000+, if you want to do the multi channel profiles, probably 
cost more like $3000+.

Now how many channels do you need in a printer? That's a good 
question, and there isn't a good answer other than the more the 
better (to a point). You might be able to use a 6 color printer for 
all of your work by removing 2 of the colors, and mixing a custom set 
of black inks (3 of them) and leave the C, M, and Y inks in for 
toning and a little bit of color work, as well as B/W with color 
elements. So you might want to look for a used 7500 to save a little 
money, and get bigger output. Or you could look at the 7600 or 4000, 
then you could build a four black, plus CMY machine. You would of 
course need to use third party inks to deal with this, and the UT 
mixed with OEM or third party CMY would be a good choice. The 4800 
would be a good choice, since it is already set for all of this, I 
would still recommend the RIP and profile creation package to gain 
the most control.

If you go with all third party inks, and want to mix your our blacks, 
I would suggest finding a supplier of the Image Specialists UltraPro 
inks. If you don't want to mix your own, the UT series inks with 
toners or CMY UltraChrome replacement inks. The UltraPro inks have 
less gloss differential than previous inks, and also a better dmax 
with the matte black than the Eboni that most people use. The gain is 
slight, but the big thing is that this matte black holds it density 
better as you overload the paper with too much ink (yes it uses a 
different carrier from the Eboni).

And all of this is just how I would approach the task, I'm certain 
there will be other opinions, and many will be much cheaper. But this 
reflects what I consider the best possible control, which in the end 
should yield the best possible results for your given needs with the 
Epson hardware (old and new). And there is one final choice... You 
could find a print shop that is really good, and let them worry about 
all the details, but you would lose some control, and you wouldn't 
learn as much as you would printing for yourself.