Digital BW, The Print

Comments below.

Steven Karafyllakis wrote:

> 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.


MIS could provide a clearing house for profiles though. Cover the major 
bases themselves
and then solicit profile contributions for more marginal papers.  Also 
for this particular
"product" we're not talking about any arbitrary ink combo - just MIS's 
improved B&W
(+color) bundled ink set + QTR "product."

> 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
>

This legitimacy issue is interesting to me. New to me, I guess.  When I 
decided I wanted to
print digital B&W, I surfed around. PN, Google, whatever.  My first 
impressions were that
Epson printers were "the ones to get" and then for "real" B&W you had to 
buy inks from
Cone or MIS or whatever.  In other words, in my mind, the 3rd party B&W 
vendors held
the high ground for B&W printing. And preferably an expensive RIP.  In 
other words,
Epson supplied the printer and other companies supplied the rest of the 
solution to make
the printer come alive.

Just marketing phenomenology from a newbie. But I had no idea that the 
"art market"
considered Epson inks special.   I don't doubt it (don't really know), 
but in fact, for B&W,
I'm still under the perhaps false impression that a carbon ink set 
creates prints with
significantly greater longevity than Epson's UC's.  True or not, again 
just some "marketing
mindshare" phenomenology.

So what's the big deal with getting tests from Wilhelm?  Cost or the 
having the goods?

Also, I would think (perhaps incorrectly) that apart from the fine art 
gallery oriented
market, there's a much, much larger hobbyist amateur market for a 
"superior and cheaper
B&W solution."  These folks would welcome a cheaper set of inks, the 
dual B&W/color
oriented solution, and the opportunity to use a wide variety of papers 
"out of the box."

I imagine the fine art crowd are the folks already "rolling their own" 
and would most
likely continue to do so.

Scott