Digital BW, The Print

Hi,
New to the group - I'm semi retired after a career in high quality printing and prepress with some academic experience too via an MA in Digital Imaging at the London Institute so I have some knowledge of repro. I am posting to find out whether I can do a quick and easy conversion of a cheap Epson CMYK inkjet printer to dedicated B&W. I bought an Epson four colour SX425w a while ago mainly to use the scanner as I also have a six colour Epson for colour photo printing and a Canon as well. So I wondered whether it is possible to convert the Cyan and Magenta carts of the SX425 to Light Black and Light Light Black to get better B&W prints when printing from a B&W original scanned and sent to print as an RGB file. The yellow cart could be another LLB or a clear optimiser. I have prepress experience of doing duotones and tritones by hand with half tone screens and printing them on a printing press so I also wonder if duotones and tritones could be attempted using varied grey inks in the printer whilst using cyan and magenta substitutes on screen. The SX425 was only £50 and as I do not need the printing function it will perhaps be interesting - has anybody tried anything remotely similar.......? Or is it too simple to work?

Pete

You might want to have a look at QuadToneRip ( www.quadtonerip.com ) and 
Paul Roark's pages ( http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/ ) for approaches 
to monochrome printing on Epson printers. I don't know whether the 
SX425W is covered - it depends on what the the printer part of it is 
based on.

On 27/08/2012 10:35, pdimage wrote:
>
> Hi,
> New to the group - I'm semi retired after a career in high quality 
> printing and prepress with some academic experience too via an MA in 
> Digital Imaging at the London Institute so I have some knowledge of 
> repro. I am posting to find out whether I can do a quick and easy 
> conversion of a cheap Epson CMYK inkjet printer to dedicated B&W. I 
> bought an Epson four colour SX425w a while ago mainly to use the 
> scanner as I also have a six colour Epson for colour photo printing 
> and a Canon as well.  ...
> Pete
>

-- 
mike finley photography
http://www.mikefinley.co.uk
http://words.mikefinley.co.uk
http://www.roguegenegallery.com/Mike_Finley-gallery.html



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

pdimage <pdimage@...> wrote:

> **
>
>
> ... I am posting to find out whether I can do a quick and easy conversion
> of a cheap Epson CMYK inkjet printer to dedicated B&W. I bought an Epson
> four colour SX425w ...
>

That appears to be a 4-color DuraBrite printer.  As such, I'd look at the
various approaches I used for the WorkForce 1100, which also uses the
DuraBrite inks, with no LM or LC.

The first issue is whether you can find empty cartridges that work with it.
 If there are none that are said to be just for that printer, see if the
SX425 cartridge numbers match those of, for example, the WorkForce of the
equivalent in your market.

If there are empty carts, then there are a number of different B&W setups
that will work.  Note that you'll have to use the Epson driver, but with a
4-color printer Photoshop curves do a rather good job.  You can put the PS
curves into an ICC with QTR's Create ICC-RGB and have a very nice "color
managed" workflow.

At http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/Inkset-list.html take a look at the
inksets for the WF30 and 1100.  The printer makes a fairly good ramp with
LK in all the color spots.  I prefer LLK in the Y position and LK in the M
and C positions.  For the ultimate in lightfastness, you can set up a 100%
carbon "Eboni-4" approach (which can also be the cheapest if you mix your
own base and dilutions -- see
http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/Ink-Mixing.pdf ).

If you want the most stunning dye images on high gloss papers, the Noritsu
K + Claria dyes are also an option.

There are lots of options depending on your goals and the extent to which
you want to mess with inks.

But, the first step is to find empty carts.

Good luck and let me know if you have questions.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Paul Roark <roark.paul@...> wrote:

> (snip)
> But, the first step is to find empty carts.
> 
> Good luck and let me know if you have questions.
> 
> Paul
> www.PaulRoark.com

Many Thanks Paul,
The refillable carts are available but I do have a couple of queries - mainly due to the only experience I have of producing high quality B&W which is via litho printing using a Pantone Warm/Cool Grey or general reference grey under the black as the second colour. The method used for commercially printed books by famous B&W photographers like Cartier Bresson etc. The film for the grey plate would always be slightly underexposed to give a slightly heavier image than the black to give extra softness to the edges - is that not possible with digital? And is there a Pantone ref/RGB or Lab value for standard Epson LK and LLK? I can't seem to find one so I have no idea where they are in the Pantone chart or the various colourspaces. I'll read the pdfs in your links and study a little more before I start out. The ink mixing sounds very interesting...

Pete