Digital BW, The Print

Today was QTR day and to my surprise it wasn't too bad, I had pretty bad experience with QTR on mac, on PC it's much better thanks to qtrgui and curve creator apps. So I made warm and cold curves, 21 step wedge turned out very linear, then I printed nice prints. They are still not better than prints from 7900. Still I like the whole process, to be able to change so many things like ink limits and tones, it's nice to have a little printer for smaller prints. Ink is going pretty fast, I'm almost out of my first set of cartridges if I can trust Epson utility. So I've ordered Ebony 6 set, refillable, let's see how this will turn out. It's still cheaper than Epson 7900 inks.

About darks. I use Eizo monitor carefully calibrated with Eye-One pro,  brightness at 80, color temperature at 5200. My both printers compress darks with all drivers - ABW, rgb, QTR. I have to balance making images marginally too bright on screen but risking to loose highlights. May be it's just printer's dynamic range not as big as monitor's.

Jacob
 website: http://www.photo3dart.com
 blog: http://photo3dart.com/wordpress



--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Michael King <drmrking@...> wrote:
>
> >>My 7900 does have problems with darks, some images have more details
> on screen than on prints and I hoped monochrome inks would improve it, but
> no luck. May be QTR curves will improve it?
> 
> to get 7900 ABW soft proofing (monitor vs print) matching you need to
> generate a QTR Create ICC profile for each paper you use and use that to
> soft proof and to print from gamma 2.2 images. Also I would use the neutral
> rather than dark setting in ABW driver as this gives better darks. Also your
> monitor should be profiled and not too bright (max 80 cd/m2) and your b&w
> prints should be viewed under a bright light. I don't think you will improve
> darks with QTR curves - the ABW driver is pretty good with nice dithering,
> better to focus on getting that working properly.
> 
> Mike
> 2009/9/9 flashinet <flashinet@...>
> 
> >
> >
> > I'm back to report my first experience with monochrome printing.
> > I've bought brand new Epson 1400 from OfficeMax for $200 and MIS UT14 inks.
> > Today I had finally got inks and here the fun started.
> >
> > Early in the day I've prepared some prints on my Epson 7900 on Hahnemuhle
> > Photo Rag printed with ABW driver and QTR created profiles.
> >
> > When I've got 1400 working I've printed the gray wedge, measured it after
> > drying and made a profile. The I've printer wedge using profile and compared
> > it to 7900 printed wedge. I can't display Excel graph here but I'll try to
> > give the numbers, it's luminosity
> > Epson Epson
> > 1440 7900
> >
> > 96.67 96.88
> > 94.3 95.64
> > 92.06 94.2
> > 89.43 92
> > 87.24 90.82
> > 84.94 89.2
> > 82.01 87.26
> > 79.26 85.9
> > 76.65 84.25
> > 73.55 82.34
> > 70.27 80.58
> > 68.07 79.14
> > 65.43 76.9
> > 63.34 75.55
> > 61.61 73.95
> > 59.45 71.82
> > 57.22 70.41
> > 55.66 68.7
> > 53.68 66.89
> > 51.33 65.16
> > 49.63 63.42
> > 47.56 61.34
> > 46.02 59.76
> > 44.51 58.04
> > 42.26 55.87
> > 40.67 54.37
> > 39.31 52.58
> > 37.18 50.79
> > 35.78 48.9
> > 34.82 47.03
> > 33.55 44.81
> > 33.19 43.26
> > 32.75 41.26
> > 31.64 39.26
> > 31.39 37.66
> > 30.82 35.62
> > 29.79 33.82
> > 29.53 31.95
> > 29.18 30.25
> > 28.17 28.4
> > 27.91 26.97
> > 27.49 25.4
> > 26.63 23.77
> > 26.53 22.5
> > 26.01 21.51
> > 25.14 20.52
> > 24.57 19.28
> > 23.92 18.9
> > 22.79 18.35
> > 22.32 17.9
> > 16.34 17.2
> >
> > AS you see 7900 has much better linearity.
> >
> > Then I've printed out 4 images on 1400 to compare with prints from 7900.
> > When I compared prints (dark, light and mid-tone images) I didn't see them
> > different enough to speak about. Pretty much the same. Which is not a bad
> > thing for $200 printer to give quality on a par with $4000 printer.
> >
> > My 7900 does have problems with darks, some images have more details
> > on screen than on prints and I hoped monochrome inks would improve it, but
> > no luck. May be QTR curves will improve it?
> > Jacob Mann
> >
> > website: http://www.photo3dart.com
> > blog: http://photo3dart.com/wordpress
> >
> > --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com<DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>,
> > "flashinet" <flashinet@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hello everybody,
> > >
> > > I'm fine art photographer working mainly with black and white. I print my
> > own photographs on Epson 7900 using ABW driver and like the results, I also
> > exhibit my prints.
> > > Still I'm reading about dedicated B&W printers and monochrome inks like
> > Paleography or MIS and I'm worried that I'm missing something in quality .
> > > I've made some research and figured that I can give it a try by buying
> > Epson 1400 printer and UT14 inks.
> > >
> > > But the question is: Is it worth it? Is quality going to be so much
> > better so it's worth all this money and trouble?
> > >
> > > Thanks you very much,
> > > Jacob Mann
> > >
> > > website: http://www.photo3dart.com
> > > blog: http://photo3dart.com/wordpress
> > >
> >
> > 
> >
> 
> 
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>