Digital BW, The Print

Hi there.

I recently ordered a set of UT-R2 greyscale inks for my Epson R220 printer and eagerly awaited their delivery from the USA, as I live in England.

I had previously experimented with the R220 using both full ink and black only B&W printing, and achieved (to my very untrained eye at least)very pleasing results. The full ink prints were a little cold & blue, and the black only prints were neutral but a little grainy, but both gave nice rich blacks and no obvious bronzing on Epson premium glossy paper. Using curves adjustment layers, I managed to print a 21 step greyscale ramp with good separation right into the shadow areas.

However, I have so far been very disapointed with the results from the UT-R2 inkset. I have been unable to get a decent black, there is very noticable bronzing on premium glossy paper, and the overall impression is very dull and grey, not achieving any where like the results I got using full ink or black only with the coloured inkset.
Some images are not only dull, but just plain wrong, showing what I can only decribe as looking like posterization in areas.

I have been using Paul Roarke's recommended settings both with and without an ICC profile. I have double checked my colour settings in Photoshop and in the Epson driver, and double checked that all the cartridges are correctly installed, including that I am using photo black for glossy printing.

I would be very grateful if anyone out there could offer some help with this as I am considering ditching the UT-R2 and going back to full ink, feeling like I have wasted a lot of time & money, what with postage, import tax etc! (I'm sure it's something I'm doing wrong however).

One thing that just occured to me...I have been using the B&W adjustment layer in CS3 to carry out the conversion to B&W, and leaving the image in RGB mode to print it. Should I be converting to greyscale before printing? Apologies if this is an elementary question.

Is there something basic I am doing wrong? Is the bronzing just to be expected on glossy paper? Many thanks for any help you can offer,

Dominic North.