Digital BW, The Print

> 
> >... Wonder why, and how much color is really there.
> 
> The 3 shades of black allow a much finer gradation of tones, but being
> all carbon, by themselves they will be warm and need to be toned to be
> cooler (or any other setting).  So, like the other RIPs, the colors
> are added in in small amounts.  The yellow is surprising because in
> the past Y was the least fade resistant and caused metamerism, and the
> other RIPS avoided using it.
> 

I've now put the top 10% of the 4800 ramp on the web, again, accessed from
the bottom of my index at http://home1.gte.net/res09aij/index.htm 

The top part of the ramp appears to be entirely color inks.  As they say,
"The more things change, the more they stay the same."  

While we assumed that Epson was doing what the rips did and using just the
color inks that would be needed to neutralize the warm carbon, that appears
not to be the case.  The 4800 and presumably 2400 are not really that much
different from the 2200 and 4000 in that Epson is still using color pigments
-- C, M, and Y -- to generate much of its grayscale.

Assuming the samples I was given were properly printed in "B&W" mode, I'd
say the new printers are not as truly B&W "carbon" printers as we and some
reviewers had assumed.  It looks like the third party rips will continue to
be needed to print top notch B&W from the OEM inkset.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com