Digital BW, The Print

Is there anyone out there with significant experience with the PiezoTone inks 
and who also has tried printing B/W output from the Epson 2200 who can 
critically compare these two.  There are conflicting reports:  some are ready to 
pack up Piezography, while others are saying the 2200 still can't compete for 
B/W output (e.g. continued problems with color casts and metamerism).  I am 
especially interested in anyone who has custom printer profiles for their 2200 
or who has access to the Gray Balancer software.

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "lawrencetrek" 
<ltitle@h...> wrote:
> Is there anyone out there with significant experience with the 
PiezoTone inks 
> and who also has tried printing B/W output from the Epson 
2200 who can 
> critically compare these two.  There are conflicting reports:  
some are ready to 
> pack up Piezography, while others are saying the 2200 still 
can't compete for 
> B/W output (e.g. continued problems with color casts and 
metamerism).  I am 
> especially interested in anyone who has custom printer 
profiles for their 2200 
> or who has access to the Gray Balancer software.

I haven't tried the PiezoTones, but I have used the original piezo 
inks for the past couple of years.  I couldn't justify spending 4-5K 
for a 7000/7500 when you could get them new, 2.5K for a Piezo 
RIP and another 750 or so for a box to drive it... well never mind, 
even if I could have justified it I couldn't have paid for it. I got a 
7600 a couple of weeks ago and will be selling my 3000 and 
1160 and using the 7600 for all my printing. I'm using a profile I 
made with a Gretag Eye-One. The canned profile is not awful, but 
it is not good enough... kinda blue/purple with some crossovers. 
If you are going to use one of these machines (or any color 
printer) for black and white you absolutely must have a custom 
profile for your printer, and I sincerely doubt if one of those weird 
scanner based profiling packages will get you decent results for 
grayscale prints. Either pony up for/borrow a spectro based 
solution, go in with a friend or two on one, or pay somebody else 
for custom profiles on the papers you will be using most. With 
color prints you could probably get away with a canned profile, 
but not with B&W. 

There is some metamerism with the inks, but I'm going to live 
with it. With a proper profile there are no crossovers, which is 
what I was most worried about, and a neutral gray is more 
neutral than I got with piezo under most lighting conditions. The 
profiles I made for PhotoRag and Archival Matte were from a 12 
hour old target prints (couldn't wait to try the new toy), so there 
may be some dry down issues involved. I plan to reprofile with 
the targets now that they have aged some and see if that helps a 
bit. With the current profile, the prints look gorgeous under 
tungsten, under a GTI daylight balanced viewing station, and in 
rooms lit by indirect window light, but have a slight cyan cast 
under direct daylight which I don't like. I'm going to try the 
reprofile first, and if that doesn't work I may fool around with 
converting to RGB and throwing a curve on them... after all I can 
make them any tone I want ;-)

The real thing is the printer itself though... it is just great. The 
desktop printers, 3000 included, are complete junk compared to 
the 7x00 and above series. Better paper transport, infinitely better 
build quality, and better printing. I remember in the piezo print 
exchanges, every time a print really jumped out at me I'd read the 
description sheet and sure enough it was printed on a 7000. And 
I don't have to mess with a CIS and I can print color and I can 
print big and I can print thick papers. I'm sold.

-Thanks for the valuable information. I don't have the space (currently), nor 
can I justify the cost of a 7600 right now.  (I understand it is the size of a small 
gas barbeque).  But, I suspect the 2200 offers similar performance on a small 
scale.

I am curious how you did your custom profile.  That is, did you create separate 
profiles that were optimized for B/W and color printing.  Some have suggested 
that the Epson driver is more linear when you use the photorealistic setting 
(under color controls), rather than no color adjustment setting with improved 
ink density.  So, when printing their targets for an optimized B/W profile they 
are using this setting which is starting the printer at something closer to linear 
with better separation of the blacks on a step wedge.  This apparently reduces 
the color gamut, but supposedly provides better B/W imaging.  Did you do 
that, or use the traditional no color adjustment setting.

I definitely cannot consider doing the profiling myself, but am prepared to 
spend ~100-200 for a custom profile///   Yet this can get expensive if I decide 
to change paper types.  For now, I will start off with Photo Rag I think.  Do you 
have any recommendations for a reliable profiling company that you may 
have worked with.

I may have misunderstood your response but you said:

if reprofiling doesn't improve things "I may fool around with 
converting to RGB and throwing a curve on them"  

Does that mean that prints with your current profile were printed in grayscale 
mode.  I am very new to this color management thing and very naive.  But, I 
was told that is necessary to print all my monochrome images in RGB mode 
when sending them to the color printer.  Is this true or not.