Digital BW, The Print

Hi all,

I would really appreciate your comments and suggestions on the following:

I joined this group after undertaking basic colour management of my
digital workflow. It seemed the worthwhile next move to try to get to
grips with managed black and white as a necessary addition to my
output. I have been following the various threads with great interest.

I own a pair of Epson 1290 printers (I believe that's 1280 in the
US?) one of which is fitted with Epson colour inks, the other with MIS
UT2 inks. I don't currently sell my prints but it is my intention to
do so when I have finished 'fiddling about' and can settle on
profiles, software and (obviously) pigment inks.

I've spent a couple of months now making prints from various sources,
creating printer profiles, using the QuadtoneRIP with the monochrome
inks etc. While the output is undoubtedly far superior to the
'straight out of the box' results and while I can see what I have
learned and what the improvements in both workflow and output have
been, I now feel that I am sufficiently wiser to re-evaluate the
direction of my efforts - hopefully with more relevant advice and help
from this group.

I am trying to make the best use of resources while trying to minimize
the amount of potentially wasted effort (and money) in trying to get
these older printers to produce increasingly 'better' prints. As such,
I feel I have a choice. To continue with these two printers and see it
as a solveable problem to improve their output with time, patience and
more understanding, or to cut my lossses and invest in a new printer
namely a 2400 or 3800 which, I get the impression, are pretty much
'bang on' straight out of the box, or at least with just a little
tweaking.

Can any of you comment on this? Are these new printers 'that much
better' that they represent a genuine step forward? Or is it that they
simply make the processes involved easier while not offering
noticeably different prints when all is said and done? I ask the
latter because I feel that the final image is not judged on technical
details (such as ink droplet size, or dithering algorithms) but on how
the print actually looks when hanging on the wall. As such that's a
pretty wide and subjective field.