Digital BW, The Print

Hi all,

Been lurking for several months trying to decide on a printer.   Bit the 
bullet and bought the 2200 last Friday (CompUSA-caught a shipment by dumb 
luck).   Most concerned about neutral B/W as I have made a book dummy now 
being reviewed for publication.   Had a heck of a time with my Photo EX   
getting either the green or magenta out.

After getting the 2200 up and running, out-of-the-box color looked fine on a 
full range test image.

First step in B/W was converting the image to B/W with channel mixer then 
print with 7 inks @ 2880 dpi using basically default settings.   Image scale 
was fine with a very slight magenta cast in both tungsten and daylight 
viewing.   

Second step was black-only similar to Clayton Jones work flow.   The result 
was a bit warm as many have said, although it was OK for a sunny scene.   
More faint sepia than magenta.   Basically very pleasing to the eye and as 
fine a dot pattern as I ever got on the EX in six inks.   Under the Lupe 
however the dot pattern was coarser than test one.

Third test was the photorealistic WF by Carl Schofield outlined in 
www.luminous-landscape.com site on 2200 printing   staying at 2880 dpi.   
This was dead neutral in daylight, ever so slightly warm under tungsten, only 
visible by quick side-by-side comparisons to daylight. 

These are very early tests for me.   Have not looked at a 21 step gray scale 
yet which is next, or different kinds of images.

But short of custom profiling, the Schofield method is probably an excellent 
beginning for those of us who need to crank out B/W images while we are 
getting deeper into a fully color managed work flow.   Many thanks to Harald, 
and the Real World Photoshop 7 authors for a high speed education on color 
management.   I'm amazed at the number of combinations that can be used with 
different results.   Trick is to keep making images too.

Thanks again to all the posters who led me to this point.

Angelo

 


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