Digital BW, The Print

dfaprinting wrote:

>
>If you really want to take things to the highest level, you should 
>buy a high quality RIP and get the other proprietary dithers that are 
>available from places like Wasatch, or Onyx, or Ergosoft... How about 
>profiled BO through a CMYK profile? You are only scratching the 
>surface with Qimage.
>
Usually the Epson driver dithering is the one to beat on quality. I have 
used the Wasatch SoftRip dithering (on quad inks as well) and wasn't 
very impressed. That type of RIP often is more directed to speed, 
consistency, economic ink use  (many prebaked CMYK settings for CcMmYK 
printers ! ) than on really good photo quality dithering. If I remember 
it correctly Ergosoft's Studioprint uses Epson dithering for the UC 
models 2100, 7600, 9600, so it can't be bad.  QTR (Gimp-print) dither is 
close to the Epson dither quality though.

Qimage's extrapolation + sharpening is the step before the dithering by 
the driver starts, the quality of Qimage is in the better algorithms for 
extrapolation + the print sharpening adapted to the native printer 
resolution. The driver then doesn't touch the bitmap loaded but only to 
dither that bitmap on the channels.

Ernst