Digital BW, The Print

pretty much all there is to know about ABW is:

1) there are four settings for darkness. Most people use "Darker" but  
some people use "dark". It depends on the gamma setting you have in  
your system. Try them. One will work better. That is two test prints.
2) You need to use the right setting for "media". If you use premium  
semi gloss, choose premium semi gloss etc. This is no brainer with  
"supported papers", other papers might need some experimentation  
here. The good thing is that the 2400 is really forgiving here. For  
kirkland I choose epson premium glossy, for semimatte i choose  
premium semi-gloss. No problems with either.
3) There is a color wheel that you can choose diferent tones from.  
Either by clicking in the wheel or by entering values. Most of us  
have found that equal values for verticle and horizontal work well.  
My favorite setting is 4H/4V, but values such as 8H/8V, and 15H/15V  
give more warmth almost to sepia at 25H/25V.
4) there are two sliders that change the tone in the shadows and the  
highlight separately. This control is VERY sublte. I alway have my  
shadow slider at about -10, and my highlight slider at about +5, but  
it is a very slight adjustment.

the only way to know for sure what the controls do is to make a  
preint. The good thing is that you are for sure going to get a good  
print every time, as long as you use epson papers. Epson papers are  
great papers by the way. Sticking to epson still gives you some  
excellent variety, from glossy to Velvet fine art.

I think that is really all there is to it. Simple, productive, and no  
expensive test printing like the "old days"
have a good one, Doug M


On Feb 16, 2006, at 12:49 PM, Tim Atherton wrote:

>
> > Not sure what you're looking for.  Do you have a K3 printer and are
> > looking for deeper technical workings, or are you kicking tires and
> > want general info on how it works?
> >
>
> running a new K3 printers - looking fro something along the lines of
> the Digital Darkroom articles they used to do on settings for Epson
> printers, setting up Colour Management in Photoshop etc. But
> something "real world" rather than full of tech specs
>
> So something fairly straightforward on what the different settings in
> ABW actually do and how to tweak them - rather than running through
> another hundred sheets of paper and ink doing endless tests...
>
>
>
>
>