Digital BW, The Print

Tyler Boley wrote:
> I'd like to do some experiments with the qimage demo to see if I like
> it and could use some input. Since I use StudioPrint all I will do is
> use it to process tiffs, then place them in the RIP. First of all, I
> was told the x600 printers were native 720dpi, no? I thought qimage
> reported back the printer native dpi, and it currently says 360x360
> for my 9600.
> Also, any advice you could give about the various scaling/sharpening
> algorythms would be a help, I'd like to limit my experimenting time.
> Basically, I'd just like to see if I can get better large prints from
> smaller format files. Is this worth playing with for that, or are
> normal Photoshop tools going to get me to pretty much the same place?
> Thanks,
> Tyler
> 
> PS- of course what I'm really trying to do is avoid reading the manual...

Qimage is RGB and RGB only. The greyscale will be handled as 
RGB and if you want to use the conversions to the QTR matte 
profile etc you need to use the RGB version of the profiles. 
Qimage's color management delivers the same color print 
results as Photoshop does but I rather use PS to do the 
greyscale conversions with the QTR profiles and then feed 
Qimage with the greyscale while Qimage's color management is 
off. I'm not sure after some tests that it does the greyscale 
conversions correct.

The 9600 has two native PPI's: the finest settings ask for 720 
PPI and Qimage reports that, the other ones are 360 PPI.

With huge enlargements: 8 MP take to say 3 x 4 feet I use the 
max of interpolations and pyramid but take the sharpening down 
to 2 as otherwise the artifacts are not acceptable. At that 
size you see that it is enlarged but my customers can't get 
better quality.

The manual is quite useful though and the GUI is not that 
informative while trying things out so I had to read a thing 
or two.
                    --
           Ernst Dinkla


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