Digital BW, The Print

On 05/08/09 1:55 AM, "yaakovsinclair" <sinclair@...> wrote:

> On the brink of buying an Epson 3800 and teaming it with Piezography
> inks. Would love some feedback from anyone whose got this route.

I have a 2200 with Cone K7 Special Edition inks and a 3800 for colour work.
The 3800 is relatively new to me, and it is a wonderful printer to work
with. My mid to longer term plan is to upgrade the 3800 with whatever Epson
puts out to replace it, and use that future printer for my colour work and
the 3800 for b/w work. The 3800 is very well suited for piezography
printing, having 8 active channels for K - K7 plus Gloss Optimizer and an
easy gloss to matte black swap.

I have not had a chance to compare b/w prints made using Piezography on my
2200 with those made using Epson K3 on the 3800. However, I recently went
from using 4 Piezography shades (K + 3 Neutral / K + 3 Sepia) back to using
a full set of 7 inks (Special Edition) and I saw an improvement. For
example, I have an image of a couple holding a baby and to my eye, the skin
tones were smoother and held more detail with the full Piezography 7 ink
set. Of course I cannot tone my prints from neutral to sepia anymore, but I
found that I preferred a Sepia to Neutral split tone, and Special Edition
does that far better than I could before.

A second area of improvement was moving from my custom QTR profile to a
custom QTR profile made by Jon Cone's folks at InkJetMall. I felt that my
profile was very good (nicely linear, etc.) but I found that the Cone
profile produced a more open and pleasing image with better shadow detail.
Jon's profiles address all 256 steps for all 7 inks (a matrix).

My suggestion. . . .  get the 3800 and use QTR to make a few prints of your
favorite images using K3 inks (a broad selection of typical material is
best). At the same time, have InkJetMall make the same prints using one of
their printers on the same paper. You'll have to select a paper they use of
course and confirm that they have a 3800 set up (or another suitable
printer). Then you'll truly know whether the difference is worth the
investment.

Best wishes.

Terry.