Digital BW, The Print

Hello everybody

I somehow managed to get fairly good black and white prints in 
the "colour position" of the driver using the curve editor of the GB 
software. But only for artificial lighting. In daylight conditions
the 
prints look greenish. 

However, before returning to classical Quadtone Printing with my 1160 
I should like to find out whether "black only printing" at 2880dpi 
using matte black ink and EAM is possible at all. I read Clayton 
Jones' "three articles" (actually now four articles) and am beginning 
to understand the interaction of the two "black boxes", i.e. PS7 and 
the EPSON 2100 driver.

But when I use "black" in the driver of the 2100 the output is
strange 
to say the least (much too light). No problem with the black position 
in the 870 and the 1160, though. 

Question 1: Has anyone tried the "transfer function" for BO 
printing and could they please provide the 13 figures necessary to
get 
a smooth curve. I tried myself, but to no avail.

Question 2: Any other approach to good BO printing with the 2100.

Question 3: Will it ever become possible to use matte black ink plus 
light grey ink for metamerism-free black and white printing?  

Thanks

Mathias

Hi,

check my other recent posts. Both gimp-print and iProof PowerRip will 
let you print only using the Black and Light Black inks. Gimp-Print 
is free, but the transition between the two inks is not perfect yet, 
so they probably still have some testing to do. I'm going to try the 
raw CMYK mode in Gimp-Print to see if I can make a good mix for 
neutral prints.

PowerRip makes perfect prints without metamerism both using all 
colors and also with the two blacks only. 

Be aware that using only black and light black will not give you 
neutral grays at all, they are _very_ brown in color. To get a 
neutral gray you will have to mix some color in there, probably cyan 
and some magenta.

I haven't had much success with transfer functions, since they seem 
to mess up ICC profiles. Neutral prints suddenly get strong color 
shifts. What I do instead to lighten up shadow areas is to fill 
another layer with 95% black and set the layer to 'Screen' and then 
use 'Blending options' for the layers to only affect the dark parts 
of the underlying layer. Remember to make a smooth transition in the 
light areas in blending options. This is not an exact method, but I 
find it works well for the 2100 which has a tendency to print 
everything from 95-100% as black and 80-95 darker than they should be.

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "chatzebussi 
<chatzebussi@y...>" <chatzebussi@y...> wrote:
> Hello everybody
> 
> I somehow managed to get fairly good black and white prints in 
> the "colour position" of the driver using the curve editor of the 
GB 
> software. But only for artificial lighting. In daylight conditions
> the 
> prints look greenish. 
> 
> However, before returning to classical Quadtone Printing with my 
1160 
> I should like to find out whether "black only printing" at 2880dpi 
> using matte black ink and EAM is possible at all. I read Clayton 
> Jones' "three articles" (actually now four articles) and am 
beginning 
> to understand the interaction of the two "black boxes", i.e. PS7 
and 
> the EPSON 2100 driver.
> 
> But when I use "black" in the driver of the 2100 the output is
> strange 
> to say the least (much too light). No problem with the black 
position 
> in the 870 and the 1160, though. 
> 
> Question 1: Has anyone tried the "transfer function" for BO 
> printing and could they please provide the 13 figures necessary to
> get 
> a smooth curve. I tried myself, but to no avail.
> 
> Question 2: Any other approach to good BO printing with the 2100.
> 
> Question 3: Will it ever become possible to use matte black ink 
plus 

> light grey ink for metamerism-free black and white printing?  
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Mathias