Digital BW, The Print

On banding:

I think that you should first make the target larger (use half 
the circle) and use 360 PPI or 720 PPI in the image at 1:1 
scale on Epson systems. The last to reduce any banding as a 
result of resampling in driver or application you print from. 
The targets are now at 300 PPI, good for Canons and HPs. Set 
no print sharpening in for example Qimage. There may still be 
enough other factors than density shifts that influence the 
result.

After that you could try to add a minimum of noise to the 
image in order to reduce banding while keeping the tone range 
representation. Had to do that too often on gradations I had 
to print for customers.  Depending on the quality of the total 
printing system you have to scale (but keep 360 PPI) and/or 
add noise to get rid of banding. The last may make the test 
less discriminating. There will be some relation in printer 
quality between printing 256 grey shades perfectly separated 
and good detail representation, both on any time of the day. 
If not this test would be over the top anyway.  Wonder how 
many printers actually can pass your test right now without 
banding + having the 256 steps perfectly separated.

Print like you would with the normal images later on, so using 
the perceptually correct printer profile.



Met vriendelijke groeten,  Ernst


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