Digital BW, The Print

There seems to be a steady trickle of users needing info on the 
R1800; here's a summary for that machine:

A) As everyone discovers very quickly, there's no way to print black-
only with the Epson driver. Printing B&W with the color inks 
generally yields mediocre results unless you have first rate 
(expensive) color profiling available. Even then, there are fade and 
metamerism related reasons to avoid that approach. The only 
reasonably priced way to get B&W is with QTR.

B) QTR supports the printer in theory, but there are very few (3-4?) 
profiles provided with the program. You have to learn to make your 
own, which is a bit confusing at first, but not too difficult. And 
yes, it is possible to make some fairly good profiles witout a 
densitometer. Read the user's guide!

C) The appropriate MIS ink set is MIS Pro ESC-R800. It yields good 
results, though not as glossy as the Epson inks. In a way this is a 
good thing: you need gloss optimizer for less papers than the Epson 
inks.

D) Not needing gloss optimizer means you can use that slot for 
another ink, eg light black, either the 7600 LK, or the K4 LK. This 
improves the smoothness of your b&w prints considerably. Several 
people are using this setup, and some others (myself included) have 
gone to a 3K system. I'm using the MIS K4 LK in the gloss position, 
and LLK in the red position. Printing color of course means swapping 
that red-LLK cart, but I don't do that much color with this printer.

E) In the tips & tricks dept.; The MIS PK LK and LLK are all warmer 
than Epson's, so they need to be balanced to print neutral.
The colors of choice for this are Cyan, and BLUE, not magenta. The 
R800 blue is a very deep purple-blue, and the combination works well 
and requires less color ink to do the job. Those two are also the 
most stable of the colors.

Any other R1800 users out there feel free to put in your suggestions 
& info. Perhaps we can put a readme file some place accessible (my 
website? the files section of the forum?) to streamline the process

Best Regards

Steve Karafyllakis