Digital BW, The Print

I installed the MIS variable tone inks in my Epson 1160 printer (used 
with a PC and Crane Museo paper)and downloaded the Roark curves for 
that printer yesterday. Before installing the inks I used the MIS 
cleaning cartridges out of an abundance of caution since the black 
inks I'd been using weren't Epson inks. In making my various color 
settings in Photoshop and in the printer dialogue boxes I've followed 
to the best of my ability the 11 footnotes that are underneath the 
Printer/Curve/Paper/Mode table on the MIS web site for these inks, 
which are pretty much identical to the setttins stated in Mr. Roark's 
message #570 posted to this group on August 10, 2001. I've also tried 
each of the four curves and played around with most of the Photoshop 
color settings and properties settings, making changes of one sort or 
another and then Epson dialogue box print settings in an effort to 
get something resembling a decent print. I've also cleaned the 
nozzles and checked the alignment of the printing cartridges. 
Regardless of what I do, only the darkest areas print, there are no 
midtones or highlights. Some look slightly better than others 
depending on what I changed but none except the first two that I made 
look anything like a decent print (the first two weren't great but at 
least they kind of looked like a photograph).  The prints actually 
look almost exactly like line prints (i.e. all black and white, no 
grays, and the white is just the paper white with no detail). I 
thought at first that only the black ink was printing but the 
cartridge level in the Epson dialogue box shows that the color inks 
actually are depleting faster than the black ink so I assume they 
must be going somewhere. I'd suspect a problem with my printer except 
that I was making very nice prints using the standard Epson color 
inks and a third party black ink, with no special curves, immediately 
before installing the MIS inks and the Roark curves. If anyone has 
experienced a similar problem, I'd appreciate hearing from you. I'm 
going to call MIS this morning but thought I'd post this here too in 
case MIS is unable to help. Thanks in advance. Brian

Brian,

I have an 1160 and use the MIS-VM inkset. The problem you are 
describing sounds like you are missing 1 or more ink flows to the 
print head. To check for proper ink flow to the carts download the 
MIS purge pattern zip file an print the 4 color purge pattern without 
using any curve adjustments. You should have 4 distinct and smooth 
bars from black to blue grey. If there are any problems it will be 
obvious here. You should do this before calling MIS.

The carts may need to be primed again to get the ink flowing 
properly. Also be sure you print Paul's new 21step wedge to see how 
that looks with his curves loaded and applied.

Once you have the ink flows verified you will need to evaluate the 
results from the different curves to see if tweaking is required. 
I've had problems with low tone posterization with the warm tone 
curve and to a minor extent with some negatives with all the curves 
using all the proper settings and paper. I still haven't ironed out 
all of the problems but I have looked at some very stunning prints 
made by a friend with his 1160 and the VM inkset. 

Still even with these problems I've been able to make good prints 
(not exceptionals prints) so persistence will pay off.

Welcome to quad tone printing,

Don Bryant