Digital BW, The Print

I guess since I'm to blame for all of this <G> I should post a quick reply. It was of course 
great to meet everybody. TO see that many prints at once in a small room was 
overwhelming but the biggest thing I took away was this:
We are indeed at a point where the average user as well as those who print for a living can 
produce very high quality prints. I think it was evident that the vast majority of even the 
"A" prints could stand on their own. My curiosity was to see how the different inks, drivers 
and printers responded to the same pixel data. We saw a fairly wide variation. I would have 
been extremely depressed if they all looked the same.
Now that does bring up David's point about the lack of a universal ICC workflow for 
grayscale imaging. And that's part of the reason I'm so excited about what I've seen from 
HP's Z3100. PrintFix v2 is going to address this as well, from what I understand. 
So we've got a number of high quality output devices that we have all learned to 
manipulate in the service of our creative vision, as evidenced in the "B" samples. This year 
really seems to mark the beginning of mainstream color management tools for us bw 
printers. No more second class citizen status.I do want to point out that Roy Harrington 
deserves a lot of credit for developing QTR and the create ICC app in particular.This really 
is an invaluable step along the road to grayscale management.
So now the big boys are poised to bring neutral bw and color controlto OEM solutions. In 
my view that can only mean more and better options for all of us. It will be very hard to 
give up third party quads and sevens if it comes to that, but it feels like that train is about 
to leave the station. 
My idea for the print-off was really in the spirit of seeing where we are in terms of 
process, rather than a critique of image editing or media. So I do hope the discussion 
doesn't devolve into "Your print sucked". But again, thanks to everyone for coming out. I'm 
up to my eyeballs in work right now but I do have the "A" samples here and when things 
calm down, I'll give them a good look and if I have anything remotely intelligent to say, I'l 
pass it on. OK, back to work for me.
amadou diallo