Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Steve Kale 
<stevekale@b...> wrote:
>
> 
> I finally clarified various issues relating to Simulate Black Ink 
in Epson's
> ICC profiles yesterday.  The profiles installed when one installs 
an Epson
> driver do not have the ability to simulate black ink.  For each 
intent,
> including relative colormetric, Epson has built some form of black 
point
> compensation into their profiles so that the black point extends to 
perfect
> black.  Thus when you do a soft proof, PS sees perfect black and 
greys out
> simulate ink black.
> 
> The Epson USA website provides another set of profiles for 
download - in
> addition to those installed by the driver installation.  These 
profiles have
> been made not by Epson (and are not supported by Epson) but by X-
Rite.
> Clearly it is a way for X-Rite to be seen by many Epson users.  
These
> profiles behave in the "conventional" manner with respect to 
Simulate Black
> Ink.
> 
> I can only think that the reason why Epson has built black point
> compensation directly into their profiles is because either (a) 
they don't
> want to highlight how bad the black point can be, 

I think this is most likely, it would keep a lot of people from 
calling asking why the image on their monitor looks so bad when they 
softproof with the default profiles. Also keeps people from knowing 
exactly what the dmax is for a given paper without actually printing 
on that paper.