Digital BW, The Print

Hi folks,

I noticed in my black and white prints I've been spitting out from 
the Epson that there is a very faint and unnoticeable banding(?) or 
light lines of dark especially in the darker regions of the picture. 
The line doesn't go across the whole print but could it be the result 
of the microweave setting?

Or is this due to the natural grain of the paper? I used both EAM 
where it's worse and the Photo Rag which is marvelous but much more 
fainter. So is EAM worse than Photo Rag for masking very faint 
banding.

I did re-align my printer head in a check. I'm not sure how tolerant 
it was but I also found out that the "banding" is a lot worse on the 
high speed setting which I did spit out like 20 prints accidentally 
on that setting without knowing.

Any clues?

AW

Actually on a second look the so called "banding" goes from west to 
east when aligned vertically. My suspicion is that the the printer 
heads are moving in that direction and that it's so faint that you 
have to look at it about 3 inches to see the regions of very thin 
white "lines" in the midst of dark areas of the print.

Perhaps I'm too picky here? The C80 is a cheap enough printer so 
perhaps the 1280 is 10 times better then? :D

AW

Hi folks,

My suspicions of the problem I think now based on a little bit of 
research is probably not light banding but scuffing in the grain of 
the paper because it occurs only in the darkest areas of the print. 
Rough me but my work prints are meant to be bumped around. Of course 
I'm rather happy to know that my printer has better head alignment 
(straight out of the box isn't the best) now and that the high speed 
option is shut off :).

Now I need to get Cone's profiling C80 software and I'm set.

How can one tell the different amongst light banding (which I suspect 
are white or black lines going across the paper), paper grain, or 
scuffing/flaking in dark areas (which is rather common and EAM 
reveals it most)??? :) Any ideaS?

AW