Digital BW, The Print

It is my understanding that the Epson print driver is only 8 bit.  If true,
then a conversion to 8 bits occurs to all 16 bit files before printing.  You
can convert the file manually in PS and then print or you can just print the
16 bit file and let the Epson driver do its own conversion as necessary.  Is
there any advantage to one method over the other in regards to print
quality?  I can run tests but didn't want to "reinvent the wheel" if someone
else had already tested this.

Thanks in advance,
Doug

Jason DeFontes wrote:

> There's no magic to converting from 16 bit to 8 bit, you just 
> throw away the 8 least significant bits.

It's not as simple as that. As far as I know, PS does dithering
during this conversion which produces smoother image than just throwing
away extra bits (although it is not necessarily noticeable in the printed result).
How does the printer driver do the conversion - probably nobody but its
authors know.

------
Evgueni Tchetchetkine
che@..., che@...
http://www.angelfire.com/music2/etchet0m/

> Message: 8
>    Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 16:49:16 -0400
>    From: Jason DeFontes <jason@...>
> Subject: Re: Photoshop or Epson 8 Bit?
> 
> Doug,
> 
> There's no magic to converting from 16 bit to 8 bit, you just 
> throw away 
> the 8 least significant bits. I can't imagine that there would be any 
> difference whether the driver or PS did this. You'd probably 
> save time 
> pushing data down to the printer if you converted in PS first.
> 
> -Jason
> 
> Doug Fisher wrote:
> > It is my understanding that the Epson print driver is only 
> 8 bit.  If true,
> > then a conversion to 8 bits occurs to all 16 bit files 
> before printing.  You
> > can convert the file manually in PS and then print or you 
> can just print the
> > 16 bit file and let the Epson driver do its own conversion 
> as necessary.  Is
> > there any advantage to one method over the other in regards to print
> > quality?  I can run tests but didn't want to "reinvent the 
> wheel" if someone
> > else had already tested this.
> > 
> > Thanks in advance,
> > Doug

Hi All,

a question that may affect many here, though it isn't directly about 
printing. Are any of you working with a Windows 2000 or XP machine 
with 2GB or more RAM? If so, can you do a bit of testing for me to 
see if you can get memory useage in the Task Manager much above 1GB? 
Adobe seems to think I'm the only one with the problem, I get up to 
1,7 or 1,8 with Photoshop 5.5, but 6 is stuck somewere around 1,0 or 
1,1.

If you've got gigaRAM and can check, please let me know something 
about your hardware configuration. If you want to see what's gone on 
before, go to the Adobe Forums for Photoshop Windows, and look for 
the thread, "More memory, but not for Pshop".

Thanks,

Tim



-- 
Tim Spragens

http://www.borderless-photos.de
http://www.borderless-photos.com