Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Steve Kale <stevekale@...> wrote:
>
> Agree completely.  The only thing that is making me consider one is the fact
> that I'd like to not be constrained by the ink limits in the Epson driver

I'm still unsure about that. Yes indeed, you can open up the color channels based on media 
performance, and of course linearization has got to be a benifit. But it's beginning to look to 
me like lots of ink makes things more difficult for the profiler. I'll know more about this later. 
So far, the cleanest profiles without problems are coming from set-ups with very conservative 
ink levels, individual and total. So are we back to Epson driver performance?
The other thing you can't match is Epson's strange GCR and total ink. Somehow they only 
allow 100% at rgb 000, so only k ink there, but obvioulsy considerably more in dark colors. 
So total ink is "variable". The downside to this is there may not be enough color inks available 
at very dark rich colors like deep browns. You can easily see this with a 3d gamut veiwer of 
an Epson RGB profile vrs a good CMYK profile, it's very skinny near K. Then the question 
becomes, how often do you really miss those colors in the real world? Sometimes all of this is 
just talk.
But the reverse is definitely true, you can't limit more without a RIP for certain media. If you 
want to print beautiful pastel color on something like a japanese paper, there may be no 
Epson media setting that will limit enough.
Tyler