Digital BW, The Print

Got the Epson RIP today. Preliminary results very good actually. But 
the documentation is just terrible -- as in "nonexistent". They 
assume you know RIP concepts and how they work and how to use them (I 
had a vague idea).

I use Cone's Selenium Piezotone quadtones with Piezeography software 
on a 1280 as my "gold standard". Now I'm not saying that's the best 
because I obviously haven't tried all other ink systems. Its just 
that the above almost identically matches the Kodak Gray Scale 
standard (Kodak cat. # 152 7654). A 21 step stepwedge printed on EAM 
using the RIP is a virtual exact match to the Kodak wedge and the 
wedge printed with Piezotone. Nice and neutral across all tones. I 
haven't been able to check out metamerism yet because no daylight has 
been available since I just started working on this while it was 
still dark. Tungsten and an Ott-Lite show no metamerism so far -- 
we'll see. 

It seems Pieziography holds a slight advantage on transitions in the 
shadows -- from about 80% to 95% black. Transitions in tones lighter 
than 80% look identical -- real nice. Two 8 by 10 prints, one from 
the RIP and one from Pieziography, look identical from an eye 
distance of about 18 inches and farther.

It appears the RIP won't let you print more than 1440dpi with Matte 
Black ink. There are many parameters to play with so I hope to get 
better results after some fooling around. Again, we'll see. Haven't 
tried to print on anything other than EAM yet. If I print in black 
only with the RIP dots are visible and appear as grain and is 
unacceptable (to me) for anything other than the most casual prints. 
Printing greyscale using color makes dots invisible except thru an 8X 
loupe. If there is no metamerism with these prints, then there's 
something going on with the distribution of inks with the RIP. BTW, 
the driver the RIP uses is not a "sissy" driver -- I had to 
completely realign and nozzle check my printer very thoroughly and 
precisly to prevent banding.

I'm running Windows 98SE, 850Mhz with 512 RAM. No crashes yet, whew.
With the exception of the documentation, this RIP seems like a real 
winner for the 2200 -- I haven't tried to print in color yet but the 
standard Epson driver works just fine for that. Next on the agenda is 
to see if I can improve the shadow transitions a bit (I have a couple 
of ideas) and also print some duotone images.

Couple of questions: you said the RIP won't let you print more than 
1440 with matte black.  Does that mean (1) that this is the only 
printing option available (e.g., no photo black, no other papers) or 
(2) that you can't go above 1440 with matte black?

Also, how does the RIP interact with Photoshop and the stadard print 
driver?  Do you just ignore those (e.g., save the file in photoshop, 
close photoshop, open the RIP then open the image within the RIP)?

Also, if you'd be kind enough to post your exact steps for using the 
RIP (since there's no documentation), that'd be great.  Thanks.

Sorry, forgot a question: have you compared prints of the same file 
using the standard Epson driver and the new RIP and/or prints with 
ImagePrint and the new RIP?

Someone mentioned that the RIP doesn't work if the 2200 is connected via USB. 
 Do you know if that is the case?

Helen

>>Got the Epson RIP today. Preliminary results very good actually. But 
the documentation is just terrible -- as in "nonexistent". They 
assume you know RIP concepts and how they work and how to use them (I 
had a vague idea).<<



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I'm just learning about this RIP and it makes me a bit nervous to 
make statements with all you folks reading this but here goes.

The RIP allows only two dpi choices using EAM, 720by720 and 1440by720.

I'm using a USB port and its working fine.

With fear and trembling I tell you I see negligible metamerism in 
greyscale. This is a major thing.

My screen is profiled at 6500 deg. and the print from the RIP does 
not quite match my screen -- my screen is cold-neutral and the print 
is warm-neutral. I suspect this can be fixed one way or another, 
we'll see.

If I hold two identical prints both printed at 1440dpi next to each 
other, one using the standard Epson driver and the other using the 
RIP I notice no difference in resolution or clarity. The standard 
print is cold-neutral (like my screen) but with hue shifts across 
tones and unacceptable metamerism. The RIP print is warm-neutral with 
no hue shifts across tones and virtually no metamerism. ImagePrint 5 
wouldn't work on my WIN98SE computer so I can't compare results to 
that RIP. In my opinion, Cone's inks and Pieziography still yield a 
better print (don't know about MIS stuff, haven't tried them yet). 
Piezotones with Pieziography give superlative results but its 
expensive and the last time I ordered ink from them it took a month 
to get. And the Pieziography system is not available for the 2200.

Photo black is allowed on non-matte papers. Epson Premium Luster is 
allowed to go up to 2880by1440 with photo black but I haven't tried 
it yet.

The RIP is treated as just another printer in Photoshop. When you 
print, you print to the RIP instead of directly to the 2200. "Epson 
Stylus 2200RIP" shows up on your printer list. Simple.

A 63 page PDF user's manual is included on the RIP CD. 48 pages are 
dedicated to installation and troubleshooting and 15 pages to what 
things are that are displayed on your screen. These 15 pages tell you 
virtually nothing; for example, there's a field on the RIP 
labelled "greyscale control". Wow, you say, that's an important 
control. Here's what the manual says about it, "Specify the data to 
be printed using only black ink when you are printing the grey part 
of color data." Huh, that's it? Yup, that's it, see what I mean?

Somebody asked if I would make a post listing steps how the RIP is 
used. I would be happy to if you could be more specific, but 
remember, I'm still learning this thing and I'm certainly not an 
expert on RIPs.

Do you know if there is a way to control the tone of the B&W print with 
this RIP? Like a tone picker or something to make warm tone print?

-Jeff

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Jeff Magidson 
<jef.jef@v...> wrote:
> Do you know if there is a way to control the tone of the B&W print 
with 
> this RIP? Like a tone picker or something to make warm tone print?

Don't see one. One way you could tone, and the way I prefer over the 
ImagePrint method, is to mode over to duotone in PS and your tint 
choices are infinite.