Digital BW, The Print

Milt,

Are you using the Epson ABW driver path or the colour driver path to print
your B&W?

You'll get the best B&W out of the Epson driver from using the ABW path and
generating a a custom QTR create ICC profile for your print setup.
The profile is easy to create if you have a spectro.

The quality advantage I found with the IP and the x800 over the ABW path,
was IP uses a better dither algorithm so you can't see the coloured ink
droplets so easily.
Epson is catching up all the time though and I have a x880 now and they have
fixed this issue and I don't expect that there will be a noticable quality
difference between IP and Epson ABW+ICC on the x880.

IP is still useful for productivity and profiles - but that's not what you
care about.

Mike


On 07/02/2008, miltreeder <miltonreeder@...> wrote:
>
>   No, control is NOT the issue, print quality is the ONLY criteria.
> Interesting results tonight. I have a scanned 4x5 bw image of the the
> general store at Bodie, CA (the ghost town). It has a very full range
> of tones so I thought it would be a good test. I also included a step
> table showing the grays from 0-255.
> I printed the same image using IP and the Epson driver on Photoshop.
> The results:
> - the IP print was neutral in tone vs the PS driver image being warm
> toned
> - the tonal separation on the IP print is better (e.g. visibley
> noticeable)
> - the IP print has better separation on my step wedge in the blacks.
> I can see the separation between black and 005 (on a 255 scale) but on
> the PS driver I must go up to 009 before I can see any difference in the
> blacks.
>
> So it seems that using a visual standard (e.g. very subjective) the IP
> generated print had a better look than the PS generated print.
>
> However, when I did a similar test in color, it was much less noticable.
> The PS print just seemed a bit more saturated.
>
> Milt
>
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com<DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>,
> "E Neilsen"
> <e.neilsen2@...> wrote:
> >
> > Milt, If your looking for more control than you get out of the printer
> than
> > ABW gives you, look into QTR, or QTR and a profile maker like Print
> Fix Pro.
> > Or add the low cost Qimage to help sharpen the image give you the
> ;layout
> > properties of a RIP (or many of them) and for $650.00 you have your
> self
> > control over split tones, B&W, and color printing without the heavy
> > investment of IP.
> >
> > Eric
>
> 
>


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