Digital BW, The Print

Tyler Boley wrote:

>A very worthwhile article. I have met Mac Holbert, these people are
>obviously committed to fine printing.
>An interesting aspect of the article, as Bruce Watson's reply
>indicates, is that other alternative solutions to the problem are
>never mentioned. It's very obvious that there is a good working
>relationship between Nash and Epson. I doubt 9800s have been shipped
>to many people for evaluation that don't have such a relationship.
>Therefore only solutions provided by, and none frowned upon, by Epson
>are discussed.
>For example, a quick check with a few old members on this list and he
>wouldn't have wasted his time testing a 2000 or 9500. Though Mac may
>have experimented with all kinds of approaches, when it comes to
>writing articles or making recommendations, I doubt his organization
>will jeopardize a relationship with Epson that is so rewarding to them.
>There are very few printers in this country of Mac's stature, and I
>don't intend to suggest I'm in a position to question his word.
>But I want to stress again- there are options, some extremely
>successful, some that even helped lead the way to slow improvement in
>these out-of-the-box improvements.
>Tyler
>  
>
Tyler,


Very well said.  It should be nice to put an alternative timetable next 
to the article with all the third party solutions to the problems 
described. Possibly not solving all the issues but a lot of them. 
Mediastreet's Generations pigment ink was there to replace the fading 
Epson dyes of the 9000, the same inkset was better on gamut and 
metamerism than the Epson Archival 9500 etc that appeared later. Cone's 
Piezography inkset and software. Ilford's Monokrome pigment inkset. MIS 
inks. Lyson's (Joseph Holmes) Small Gamut set. All the RIP versions for 
Quad printing and Paul's curves.

To be honest the struggle they described to get good B&W prints from a 
9500 with the Epson Archival ink sounds too naive. The inkset had 
everything against it for that task. No expert needed to understand 
that. We didn't upgrade the 9000's we had then.


Ernst