Digital BW, The Print

Here are a few ideas that I hope will be helpful. First, it's almost a given
that you must calibrate your monitor. There are several very inexpensive
calibrators now that didn't exist a few years ago. The Pantone Huey and the
Colorvision Spider Express are both under $100 and either will be FAR better
than nothing.

Second, learning the Photoshop dialog boxes for printing is hard enough, but
when you actually click the print button, you go from Photoshop into the
Epson driver where there are a bunch of other dialog boxes. You have to know
what the settings should be here to avoid double profiling. It's way too
easy to make a mistake and the best advice is to sit down with someone who
actually knows what they're doing to go through these boxes and what each
means. It is NOT intuitive.

Third, I suggest you look into QImage. This is a printing program that many
Windows users rave about (unavailable for the Mac), something I have no
personal knowledge of but I've heard that using it bypasses both Photoshop
and the Epson drivers completely making it hard to double profile.

Last, I have to second the person who mentioned the criticality of
softproofing if you stay with Photoshop for printing. I the "View" menu,
under softproofing, there is a list of profiles. You MUST SELECT the one for
the paper you are using, NOT the default profile. Otherwise, you're not
really proofing on screen. Using the softproof feature is what allows
Photoshop to "understand" what printer/ink/paper combination you are using
and approximate it on screen. Yu can toggle beetween softproofing on and off
to see the difference, all under the View menu.

You might also try a couple of the many color management books on the market
to further clarify these things.

Best of luck...

Rick