Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Scott 
McLoughlin <scott@a...> wrote:
> Somehow I think competition could come in the form of supplying
> more profiles for more papers than Epson would.
> 
> Just a silly example, but I've read many posts over recent months
> about folks wanting to substitute Eboni for a Epsons MK. Then
> they ask if the Epson profiles will "work" for color stuff, and the
> answer is "roll your own profiles."

Unfortunately that is the right answer, silly or not. The other 
alternative for desktop machines at least, is to swap out inks when 
you want to do B&W. Clayton and others have been having good success 
at fooling the 2200 into not doing an ink charging cycle, so its 
possible to do with out waste.

> 
> Well, that's silly. The vast majority of of the potential market 
will
> never roll their own profiles or buy a densitometer or whatever.
> 
> Witness the seeming popularity of the C84/C86 and MIS EZ inks
> combo.
> 
> So what if MIS put together an inkset for the 2200 (2400, etc.)
> that was less expensive than Epson's, did a better job at B&W
> printing with QTR, did as good or at least a credible job at color
> prints, and then came with a little downloadable application that
> installed a ton of canned profiles (QTR and Epson driver) for a
> ton of cool papers.
> 
It's not that hard; I've had Eboni in my 7600 for a year, and just 
recently replaced the MIS LK with my own custom neutral LK. I keep 
MIS color Ultraclones in the rest of the slots for color work. I've 
been using MonacoEZcolor to re-profile for each change, and while 
there are better (and more expensive) profiling suites available, 
Monaco works well enough most of the time. The package from MIS 
you're suggesting is a good idea, but people would still need to do 
custom curves and profiles for non-supported papers. And there are 
many new papers becoming available, you can't reasonably expect a 
small company like MIS to keep up with them all.

Carving out a niche in this case is digging yourself into a hole: it 
doesn't answer the recognition/legitimacy issue in the broader art 
world, and as Epson gains market share, companies like MIS will 
lose, and become progressively less able to support the R&D 
neccessary to keep up. There is of course the wild card factor: some 
enterprising individual in Japan might sell the ink formula to a 
Chinsese ink maker, but even if we have the exact same inks under a 
different name convincing the art public they are just as good will 
still require hard numbers, preferrably generated by Wilhelm.

Steve Karafyllakis