Digital BW, The Print

Phillip, I have an R1800, and I can't tell you in how many ways I 
disagree with you. But here's a try:
First of all, there may be no B&W for the Claria printers for a 
while; the chips have two extra contacts and there's some kind of 
electric ink level sensing in each cart, so they may be more 
difficult to reverse-engineer and mass produce. And in case you 
missed Paul Roark's remark on the subject, Epson is building towards 
further infringement suits, and these carts could well involved.
 
We don't know for sure that the printer will work well with pigments. 
It may not simply supercede the 1280 in the line-up, it may behave 
like it as well: many of us used one, (I had 4) and cursed the beast 
everyday because it clogged so readily. 
On the other hand, while more channels may indeed mean more 
complexity, they also offer more versatility. I'm using the glop 
channel for an LK, and the red for an LLK, and of course the printer 
has both MK and PK already. So I have 3K matte and Photo black in one 
machine, with toning all the way from deep blue to deep sepia. And I 
am only a single cartidge switch away from doing color. Or, you could 
use only the LK in the glop channel, and have 2K B&W and full-time 
PIGMENT color. And 2K B&W with that printer is nothing to sneer at, 
it is excellent. The only downside is the fact that there aren't many 
pre-made QTR profiles for this printer, you have to learn to make 
your own.

As for using the Eppson driver, how would you get decent B&W out of 
that? You either need good profiling hardware and software (more 
complexity and cost: cheapest available that will do the job- 
Printfix Pro at $500.00) or you go with BO, IF the driver will allow 
you to do that. My R260 driver will not, so I doubt the R1400 will be 
different.

But the real qusestion is: do you want to start printing now? or 
several months down the road?

Steve Karafyllakis



--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Philip 
Schwartz" <Philip.Schwartz@...> wrote:
>
> I, too, was considering dedicating an R1800 to b&w with MIS inks, 
but
> the 1400 may provide a better option. Here's why:
> More ink channels increase complexity and cost for no return when
> using a printer with a dedicated b&w ink set. For example, the R1800
> natively supports CMYK, plus photo black, blue, red, and gloss
> optimizer. You will need a RIP to correctly partition and linearize
> b&w inks. If you don't print on glossy paper you don't even need the
> PK or glop channel, so you might just as well turn them off. This
> leaves you with a hextone printer :-)   
> You might as well just start with a 6 color printer and have the
> option of using the Epson driver to print. 
>