Digital BW, The Print

BTW I had asked a few questions of Epson UK Support which were escalated
from the front line.  Specifically I had asked:

1. Does Colorbase perform an accurate linearisation  of the printer�s 4
colours (C, M, Y and K)?
2. Or is it modelling the linearisation to reach a �standard� or �reference�
printer which may not have been perfectly linear (presumably the printer
used to generate all of the Epson ICC profiles)?
3. On another note, does the 4800 driver internal CMYK operation treat the
printer as a 4 colour printer with Black comprising a continuum of K, LK and
LLK and Cyan comprising a continuum of C and LC (and likewise for Magenta),
or is separation broken into 8 channels?

Here is the response I got:

  1. Epson ColorBase does not do a linearization, just a calibration.
 
    2. It is referenced against known LAB values as defined by the
International Color Consortium and EPSON Japan. One member of EPSON gave a
demo last week to a dealer where he used ColorBase, the standard profiles
and could reach the Fogra Standards for a proof.
    3. Our printer driver expects RGB data. Then with the help of different
LUTs the RGB data are transformed into CMYK data or if there is more ink
into CcMmYKLkLLk data, so it is 8 separate channels. The LUTs are actually
doing the colour matching and colour separation. Then the Halftone Module
translates the colour separation data (always 8 bit even if the input can be
16 bit) into 2 bit binary data.


I have no idea what they mean by the first sentence in 2.

Cheers

Steve