Digital BW, The Print

Jo,

Welcome to this sometimes neurotic, disfunctional group.

I am going to assume you do NOT want to mess with loading your own 
inks, and playing around with RIPs, etc. Not knowing what you find 
lacking in the 2200 printer (and there are many limitations there), I 
can tell you you have 2 options that will give you better Gloss/Semi 
Gloss prints straight out of the box:

(1) Epson R2400 using the Epson Advanced Black and White (ABW) mode. 
You will get better black density (Dmax) and a more neutral print. 
You can make the prints cooler, warmer, or other hues with relative 
ease with ABW. The drawback is that there is still some residual 
bronzing and gloss differential. But many people live with it, quite 
happily.
(2) HP printers with their Vivera inks. Make sure you look at a model 
that supports the b/w ink cartridges. You will get excellent gloss, 
semi-gloss prints. The drawback is that you are limited to the 
recommended HP papers, which are not completely water proof. The 
prints dry down just fine after 24 hours.

One way to go about is to take a lap-top loaded with the printer 
drivers for the printer (down-load from manufacturer web site), a USB 
cable, and head over to CompUsa. Ask them to hook up their display 
printers. If the manufacturer rep is around, you may not even have to 
buy the paper for the respective printers. Try them out, and see if 
they suit your needs.

Hope this helps.

Shilesh

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Joanne Emerson" 
<jojo_xmodel@y...> wrote:
>
> Greetings everyone!
> 
>  A photographer friend recommended this group to provide me with 
> some answers to digital printing on glossy/semi-gloss papers.
> 
> I'm a former model who is now working at the other end of the 
camera 
> photographing other models to help them build and develop their 
> books. When I shoot film I have access to a wet darkroom, it's 
> messy, very time consuming but the results are quite good. For 
> digital printing (Epson 2200 and high gloss/semi gloss papers) the 
> results don't compare to silver prints. But I'd prefer to shoot 
> digital and print on glossy papers, since b&w gloss prints are the 
> industry standard requested by agencies for modeling portfolios. 
> 
> Can someone make some recommendations for inks that will improve 
the 
> quality of my digital prints on gloss papers. Hope to hear back 
from 
> someone soon.
> 
> Have a wonderful day!
> Jo
>