Digital BW, The Print

This has probably been discussed and I've missed it. Nevertheless, today I stumbled across a website that suggests that by following certain settings on the 1400/1430 one can achieve very good B&W with just one black pigment ink. They claim smooth tones (thus no graininess) that rival ABW settings. What's up with that? Here's a link to their site: http://www.photosnowdonia.co.uk/ZPS/epson1400-B&W.htm It really doesn't make any sense that it would work for fine art work, so please, has anyone reported on this? Do I hear Clayton coming down the hall?

I have a 1400 with the UT-14 ink set and a 1430 with color ink. I'll try this out on the 1430 and report back on how well it works. I can compare this to prints made with the UT-14 and Carbon-6 ink sets. 

If this works reasonably well, it would be a good starting point for people just getting into black and white conversions.

Paul Roark experimented (if that's right word) with this when the 1400 first came out. Perhaps he'll jump in here. I seem to recall the success of this technique varied somewhat with the particular 1400 being used, ie there was some variance from one 1400 to another.

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Michael" <michael3442@...> wrote:

>
> This has probably been discussed and I've missed it. Nevertheless, today I stumbled across a website that suggests that by following certain settings on the 1400/1430 one can achieve very good B&W with just one black pigment ink. They claim smooth tones (thus no graininess) that rival ABW settings. What's up with that? Here's a link to their site: http://www.photosnowdonia.co.uk/ZPS/epson1400-B&W.htm It really doesn't make any sense that it would work for fine art work, so please, has anyone reported on this? Do I hear Clayton coming down the hall?
>

I assume that you are talking about Black Only mode. The print is
done with the K ink (not diluted) only. 

Since the 1400 (and some other
printers from Epson) is equiped with heads able to give 1.5pl mini of
ink, even the Black Only mode gives a relatively smooth print, because
the dots are really tiny. So this is true: Fine Art is possible even in
BO mode. 

By the way, smoothness might not be mandatory in all cases.
Since BO mode gives more neutral tones than diluted inks, BO mode is a
good configuration for some subjects. 

Sylvain. 

Le 2013-05-30 15:05,
Paul a écrit : 

> Paul Roark experimented (if that's right word) with
this when the 1400 first came out. Perhaps he'll jump in here. I seem to
recall the success of this technique varied somewhat with the particular
1400 being used, ie there was some variance from one 1400 to another.
>

> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Michael"
wrote:
>> This has probably been discussed and I've missed it.
Nevertheless, today I stumbled across a website that suggests that by
following certain settings on the 1400/1430 one can achieve very good
B&W with just one black pigment ink. They claim smooth tones (thus no
graininess) that rival ABW settings. What's up with that? Here's a link
to their site: http://www.photosnowdonia.co.uk/ZPS/epson1400-B&W.htm [1]
It really doesn't make any sense that it would work for fine art work,
so please, has anyone reported on this? Do I hear Clayton coming down
the hall?
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Some 1400's did a fair job of Black Only (BO) with Eboni.  I found it did a
better job than the 1800 with only one nozzle firing.  However, I did find
that it was usually not up to what I'd consider "fine art" quality.  The
dots or "graininess" of the 1.5 pl drops may be OK for some.  For me, I
find the highlights actually quite good, but the middle densities do show
more roughness than I like.

The print quality issue that I find most problematic is the microbanding.
 This does seem to vary a bit among printers and with other variables.  I
have seen some prints that are OK, others not.  The 3-MK approach was made,
initially for the 1800 but then ported to the 1400, to hide the
microbanding.

Note that the BO printing I did with the 1400 used QTR, not the Epson
driver.

At least with the paper types selected that I prefer to get a decent dmax,
the 1400 uses color inks to generate the light gray values.  This makes a
smooth print, but it suffers from a serious shadow color cross-over and
also from metamerism and color inconstancy.

With the OEM Claria color inks, the best B&W I was able to achieve uses QTR
and is half BO and half color.  See
http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/1400-Claria-BW.pdf .  This is the 1400
version of "ABW" printing.  The color inks smooth out the BO and hide the
microbanding, and the black ink through the middle densities reduces the
color issues.  This approach is actually one that I use occasionally for my
gallery brochures when I have color in the 1400 for other reasons.  It
often does a better job than some of the approaches I've used for glossy
brochures that use only 2 MIS glossy inks (NC2, for example).

The OEM ink "half color" QTR profile that is in the Zip file linked to the
above PDF still falls short of what I'd call "fine art" quality. But,
particularly for those who want to see what a B&W print composed of a dye
image on metallic paper looks like, this is a good way to test the
approach. If you like the effect, moving to a full B&W inkset then takes
care of the quality issues that will arise with the OEM color inkset.

In my experience, if you want really good B&W from a 1400 or similar
printer, you must go to a dedicated B&W inkset.  Saving money is not the
main reason I use dedicated B&W inksets.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com

On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 6:05 AM, Paul <paulmwhiting@...> wrote:

> **
>
>
> Paul Roark experimented (if that's right word) with this when the 1400
> first came out. Perhaps he'll jump in here. I seem to recall the success of
> this technique varied somewhat with the particular 1400 being used, ie
> there was some variance from one 1400 to another.
>
>


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

I would be great if you were to make the same print from both printers and upload a side by side scan, here.

----------------------------------------------------------------
"remononaz1" wrote:

> I have a 1400 with the UT-14 ink set and a 1430 with color ink. I'll try this out on the 1430 and report back on how well it works. I can compare this to prints made with the UT-14 and Carbon-6 ink sets.

As it turned out, I was working with the printer tonight and had some time to try this out. I used my 1430, which is loaded with MIS color ink. I used some Staples matte paper that I had for contact sheets. I followed the instructions exactly. 

Well, it works. But not as well as using UT-14 or Carbon-6. The dark tones are kind of blocked up and mid tones are rather washed out. I think if your were just dabbling in black and white, this would be sufficient, but it's not adequate for serious printing. 

I posted a scan of the print at http://sdrv.ms/14cmWes . The top image is the print with the color ink and the bottom image is with UT-14 on Red River Polar Matte with a known good ICC printed some time ago. (Yes, I should have cleaned my scanner!) Zoom in and you can see how blocked up the ceiling of the cave is and how washed out the sky in the canal scene is. The coloration of the two images is pretty accurate.

Otherwise, for starting out and not expecting too much, this is not really too bad.

BO can work out fine if you use QTR.

A while ago I made some 1400 BO prints with the OEM ink using the QTR 
driver. The result is surprisingly good if you manage to get your curve 
right. Much better than Homer Shannon's sample (very little 
micro-banding only to be seen with a strong magnifying glass, much 
better tone separation), but of course not as good as a multi-ink B&W setup.

On 31/05/2013 04:39, remononaz1 wrote:
> I posted a scan of the print at http://sdrv.ms/14cmWes . The top image is the print with the color ink and the bottom image is with UT-14 on Red River Polar Matte with a known good ICC printed some time ago. (Yes, I should have cleaned my scanner!) Zoom in and you can see how blocked up the ceiling of the cave is and how washed out the sky in the canal scene is. The coloration of the two images is pretty accurate.
>
> Otherwise, for starting out and not expecting too much, this is not really too bad.

Louis, any chance you still have this setup and could make a print from the same file that Homer did? That would be very interesting. And thanks to Homer for testing this out.

Will see what I can do. I need to know the dimensions of Homer's print 
though in order to do a comparable one. The test image I have is a jpg 
of 3508 x 2480 x 8 BPP with an original size of A4 at 300 ppi. Is that 
the one to print?

On 01/06/2013 04:48, Michael wrote:
> Louis, any chance you still have this setup and could make a print from the same file that Homer did? That would be very interesting. And thanks to Homer for testing this out.

Your dimensions are correct for the test image. The scanned image was two test images scanned at the same time and the scan measures 6120x8423. 

HOmer

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Louis de Stoutz <loudest@...> wrote:

>
> Will see what I can do. I need to know the dimensions of Homer's print 
> though in order to do a comparable one. The test image I have is a jpg 
> of 3508 x 2480 x 8 BPP with an original size of A4 at 300 ppi. Is that 
> the one to print?
> 
> On 01/06/2013 04:48, Michael wrote:
> > Louis, any chance you still have this setup and could make a print from the same file that Homer did? That would be very interesting. And thanks to Homer for testing this out.
>

Thanks Homer. What was the physical size of the test image when you 
printed it (in cm or inches)?

On 02/06/2013 03:39, remononaz1 wrote:
> Your dimensions are correct for the test image. The scanned image was two test images scanned at the same time and the scan measures 6120x8423.

The sheet size was 5.5x8.5. The image on it was a little smaller. 


Homer

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Louis de Stoutz <loudest@...> wrote:

>
> Thanks Homer. What was the physical size of the test image when you 
> printed it (in cm or inches)?
> 
> On 02/06/2013 03:39, remononaz1 wrote:
> > Your dimensions are correct for the test image. The scanned image was two test images scanned at the same time and the scan measures 6120x8423.
>

On 01/06/2013 03:48, Michael wrote:
 > Louis, any chance you still have this setup and could make a print
 > from the same file that Homer did? That would be very interesting.
 > And thanks to Homer for testing this out.


Hi!

At last I can post the promised test picture. My printer and my scanner 
are about 1000 miles apart, and I happened to have to travel in the 
right direction two days ago, so here it is...

Looking at the scan though showed me things I hadn't noticed when I 
quickly looked with bare eyes at the print: there are those strange 
white lines that look like scratches (or misfiring nozzles?). You see 
them best in the upper one of the two opposed wedges in the upper middle 
of the image (behind the text "Black and White test print") and in the 
little foggy landscape, the funny thing being that the lower wedge is 
perfectly clean (to do with relation between gradient direction and 
print direction???). It doesn't seem to me to be micro-banding, which on 
the other hand is visible in the middle part of the step wedge on the 
left. If anyone has an idea about those white lines, your comment will 
be very welcome...

But let's get to the essentials. This was to be compared to Homer's test 
prints (http://sdrv.ms/14cmWes). Thus I tried as much as very limited 
time permitted to replicate the conditions and especially the dimensions 
of Homer's prints. (Sorry, I missed one point: it seems I printed 
perpendicularly to how Homer did, but this isn't too important, it just 
changes the direction of the micro-banding.)

- The picture on my print measures roughly 12.5" x 17.5".
- It was printed on a 1400 with OEM Claria using only 1 black ink (BO).
- As driver I used QTR with a self-made curve.
- Settings were at "Photo paper", 2880dpi, Uni-directional, ordered.
- I used my beloved Harman Gloss Baryta paper, which not only looks, but 
even smells like traditional silver-gelatine photo-paper.
- For the scan, I "cheated" a bit, scanning at 4800 bpi, applying subtle 
capture-sharpening in PS and then reducing the image to roughly the 
dimensions of Homer's scan (3x smaller, bicubic sharper). I did this to 
make sure one could appreciate the substantially finer dot pattern of 
QTR. Of course, if you looked at the original scan, you would be 
surprised how much more there is to be seen.

But here is the picture:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B_kh_TJL6q5INzdibWxONU1aTmM&usp=sharing

In summary: a very satisfying B&W setup for anybody who wants to be able 
to do color with the same printer without changing inks, and who doesn't 
mind a tiny bit of micro-banding (not really visible to the eye, even 
with reading glasses). But, as Paul mentioned several times, not quite 
good enough for artwork that is to be sold. There, the carbon-6 setup on 
the same 1400 seems hard to beat. This is on matte paper though and thus 
a totally different story. (It reconciled me with matte printing though, 
which I used to hate in darkroom times. It has the depth of the old 
heliogravure on matte paper photo books, which I always admired and 
longed to reproduce. Thank you, Paul, for showing us the way!)

Louis

P.S: when you click on the picture and select 100% size, it is unsharp 
and you have to wait quite a while for it to finish downloading and 
become sharp. Alternatively, you can download it to your computer and 
watch it with the software of your choice.

On 10/06/2013 16:08, Louis de Stoutz wrote:
> But here is the picture:
> https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B_kh_TJL6q5INzdibWxONU1aTmM&usp=sharing

Louis:

I would agree - your print is very good for being a single black ink monotone. I'm impressed with the good gradient you got in the 'dot' at the top of the image. Yours is very even and that is difficult to do. As for the microbanding, I suspect you can't even see it in the print unless you really pixel peep. You may find that doing a head alignment eliminates it. 

My take-away on this is that for people who only want to make the occasional black and white print, and don't want to invest in the cost and learning curve of the various multi-ink options, this is a good method to use. Not perfect, but surprisingly good. 

Homer Shannon