Digital BW, The Print

Also in my chat with Level 2 support in the UK, they were still very proud
of the performance of MK ink.  I did not get the sense that they thought it
uncompetitive.  They also raised the subject of black only printing in
relation to requests to fix the 2100 driver.  In short, they weren't going
to spend the money to make any alterations when they were aware that the K3
Adv B&W solution was just around the corner.  In essence, they said black
only was dead from here on.


> From: Greg <dfaprinting@...>

> 
> --- 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.