Digital BW, The Print

On 20/07/2008 Richard Smallfield wrote:
> you don't have to swap MK/PK with the 3800.

? Every source I've seen indicates PK and MK are not available simultaneously
and must be swapped to suit the media.


> The HP is interesting, but there are two things that make me hesitate 
> about this printer:
> 1. BW can't be toned in the driver.

That's true, there is no ABW equivalent. There are two B&W modes, Black & 
gray only, and composite. Of course if you want toned results you can 
print as RGB.

Each method has limitations.

- black and gray only : utterly neutral image colour, no metamerism, but 
really only works on matte papers such as HPR. Back-to-back with Cone 
Piezo BW ICC from my old 1160, the HP has far better Dmax and (amazingly) 
smoother tones, especially in the lighter values. The old Cone plugin was 
good there, but 4-ink BW ICC is obnoxiously 'dotty'.

On semi- and gloss- bronzing is quite bad, although can be almost totally 
cured by overcoating with lacquer, but Cone inks didn't work at all except 
on matte. The bigger, costlier Z3100 adds a second gray amd Glop, and 
works extremely well on surface such as Harman FB AL gloss, producing the 
closest to un-ferrotyped gloss bromide that I've seen from any inkjet. 
There is however a slight lack of depth that comes from the image sitting 
'on' the paper.

Where black+gray mode loses out is the neutrality, which to my taste is 
just a touch clinical. I printed bromide for 30 years in the darkroom, and 
no bromide was ever quite that neutral, nor did I want it to be. Dmax is 
very good, but not quite good enough IMV.

- composite mode adds a small amount of colour, which increases DMax 
significantly and is really nice, improves compatibility with gloss and 
semi- surfaces to the extent that bronzing becomes a non-issue, and also 
introduces some metamerism and gloss differential. Nothing is perfect! 
That bothers some people but I don't find it too bad. Anyone who printed 
bromide knows that was metameric too, diverging from neutral in some 
illuminants, eg warmish bromides would often veer toward olive green 
unless toned. However, there is no ability to change the tonal colour, no 
ABW equivalent. That's quite limiting.

- B&W as RGB. For me this is the exciting and interesting bit about the 
HP. I am able to quadtone images and print as RGB to get extremely close 
to selenium-toned 1970's Agfa Record Rapid (before Agfa took out all the 
noxious Cadmium and ruined it). That was my favourite paper of all time, 
utterly sensual to print and look at. What metamerism there is is almost 
hidden by the relatively strong image colour, DMax is superb. There's just 
a bit of GD to object to on some papers. On Harman FB AL glossy or Innova 
Fibaprint glossy and also some matte surfaces, this is as close to 
perfection as I've got. What issues remain I can easily overlook, and the 
colour printing is superb too. Sure, it doesn't have the absolute 
permanence of pure carbon printing, but it should outlive me by some 
margin given the Vivera inkset's stability.

The HP isn't perfect by any means (it's a goddam inkjet!), it's just a 
different set of compromises that happens to suit me and may not match 
someone else's aspirations. I like what it does, especially the freedom 
from clogs given my pattern of intermittent use. That has been a major 
problem with all of the 4 Epsons I've owned and I'm delighted to see the 
back of it. However I think current Epsons are improved, so maybe this is 
not such a big deal.  Best of all I can get excellent colour and B&W from 
one printer which was impossible a few years ago. But HP's not unique in 
that, I know quite a few very happy 3800 owners.

It also uses ink very efficiently compared to every Epson I've owned, 
seemingly getting about 1.5x-2x as many prints from the same ink volume. 
There are some downsides eg question marks about long-term durability of 
the printer with some people having serial warranty replacements. Some 
people have head-crash problems with Harman in particular (curls when 
wetted by the ink) though I have not; and there are idiosyncrasies with 
the HP PS software which I avoid using Qimage. And Epson is more widely 
supported with a huge user base and paper mfrs fixed on the Epson market 
which perhaps means slightly worse paper compatibility with the HP (Ilford 
papers except Fiber Silk don't work well). But this is a tiny problem 
compared to my experiences with Cone and G4 inks, which worked well with 
very few papers I liked, and not at all with non-matte. There's an B9180 
list at hp9100Series@yahoogroups.com for anyone who wants to know more.

-- 
Regards

Tony Sleep
http://tonysleep.co.uk