Digital BW, The Print

Hi Carl,

> Sounds like a promising approach.

I really like the idea of no color pigments, and the tones I'm getting on
Premier Art 325 (no OBAs) is just a bit warm, but looks fine to me.

I'm now printing with QTR and 3 jets.  It may be enough to reduce the
typical one-jet banding sufficiently.  If so, it would allow the 1800 to be
a full Epson driver color printer as well as a pure carbon QTR printer if
only matte paper was used. 

>  Did you try this with any of the 3.5 pl printers 

Not yet.  The single channel 3.5 pl BO is a bit rough, but it is worth a try
on one of them also.

> ... do the "1.5 pl" printers only use the smallest dot size
> in the highlights (assuming they use some kind of variable 
> dot size approach) or is this
> controlled by driver resolution settings?

I'm not sure.  I've been using the highest resolution so far, assuming that
is going to be needed.  The 1800 is fast enough that the high resolution
settings are fine.

With QTR (and maybe even with the Epson driver) it may be that staggering
the curves is needed to control some artifacts.  The Gimp ordered dither is
not particularly good with this setup when all are on the same curve.  Once
the curves are varied, the "ordered" nature of the pattern is more
scattered.  The highlights still seem a bit too ordered, but I'm not sure
anyone can see that without a loupe. 

It's still early in this experimenting, and unfortunately, I'm at a
disadvantage due to these defective refurbs.  The C,M & Y jets are working
on this one, so I'm a bit more able to see what a good printer will look
like.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com