Digital BW, The Print

I have downloaded OPM (from bowhaus.com) and started to try it,
with a feeling of great optimism that it is the silver bullet
that will yeild great B&W prints on my Epson 2200.  I've got a
few simple questions.

(1) It appears to work only if the printer is USB connected.
Will this change soon (to support FireWire connections) ?
(No biggy, just gotta get a USB cable for the printer and a USB
hub since I'm running out).

(2) There seems to be no way to switch between landscape and
protrait orientations of the image on the paper.  It appears one
must rotate a landscape-mode image 90-degrees in one's photoeditor
and save it out before opening in OPM.  Is this rigth ?

(3) When using the up/down arrows for "scale", if you push the scale 
UP to where the image is too big for the page, the arrows seem to
freeze in this weird mode where it toggles between two scales and
you can't get it to go back down below 100% (ok, this is more a
bug report than a question).

(4) The download only had 2 profiles for the 2200; "warm" and "cold"
for EAM/EEM paper.  How soon will add'l profiles be available
(especially for the inksets everyone seems to think MIS will
be supplying soon) ?

Thanks, John

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "johngeyles" 
<jge@c...> wrote:
> I have downloaded OPM (from bowhaus.com) and started to try it,
> with a feeling of great optimism that it is the silver bullet
> that will yeild great B&W prints on my Epson 2200.  I've got a
> few simple questions.
>
> 
> (2) There seems to be no way to switch between landscape and
> protrait orientations of the image on the paper.  It appears one
> must rotate a landscape-mode image 90-degrees in one's photoeditor
> and save it out before opening in OPM.  Is this rigth ?

Yes that's right. Mildly irritating, but it's a small price to pay to 
be able to control the color tinting of your prints, in my opinion.
> 
> (3) When using the up/down arrows for "scale", if you push the
scale 
> UP to where the image is too big for the page, the arrows seem to
> freeze in this weird mode where it toggles between two scales and
> you can't get it to go back down below 100% (ok, this is more a
> bug report than a question).

Yeah, this does happen, so for example, when I open an image that's 
20x24 in its original image size, and I'm planning to print on 13x19 
paper, I have to put the paper size up to 24x36, then shrink the
image 
down to below 13x19, then put the paper sixe back to 13x19. Takes
less 
than five seconds, so no biggie.
> 
> (4) The download only had 2 profiles for the 2200; "warm" and "cold"
> for EAM/EEM paper.  How soon will add'l profiles be available
> (especially for the inksets everyone seems to think MIS will
> be supplying soon) ?

You'd have to check with Bowhaus, or maybe Antonis will know, but the 
thing is if Bowhaus keeps providing free profiles, then no-one will 
ever buy the software! In the meantime I get fantastic 
chocolatey-sepia prints using a custom profile with the OPM/IJC on the 
2200, but unfortunately have to spend a small fortune with the 
Ultrachrome Inks to do so. The interesting thing is tha absolutely 
tiny amount of Light Magenta and Yellow I use to tone the prints.

Nick

.

John,

first off, please submit these questions / bug reports to bowhaus as well. I'd 
rather you hear an "official" answer too. I am responding to your questions 
only as a beta tester (and enthusiastic adopter!) but not as an associate of 
bowhaus.

Nick pretty much answered most questions. I wanted to add just a few notes 
as well:

- I have set up my workflow so that rotations and scaling happen in Photoshop 
before I print. I only check for the right size and res by looking at the top right 
info in OPM. I don't find it as convenient as, say, Photoshop's print options, so 
I don't bother using the scaling feature.

- There is a folder for IJC profiles in our  Files section.  Eventually profiles will 
be shared there. For now there are some from Carl, but not much else. 


Please bear in mind that the whole philosophy behind IJC is to provide the 
end-user with a way to make their own custom profiles, and not have to rely 
on canned ones.

One of the benefits of tweaking a profile for the "here and now",  is that small 
local steps of gray values along the scale can preserve their subtle 
separations.  These can be easily distorted with canned profiles resulting in 
breaks of smooth gradations and loss of detail.  
Of course that's above and beyond the potential for  preserving the overall 
appearance of the gray scale from print to print, day to day, paper to paper 
and inkset to inkset. It's that aspect of IJC that I find to be the real "silver bullet" 
for bw printing - though there is currently room for improvements to its 
interface and for bug fixes .

See also other messages here regarding 720dpi, and 8 vs 16 bits.


Antonis



--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "johngeyles" 
<jge@c...> wrote:

> I have downloaded OPM (from bowhaus.com) and started to try it,
> with a feeling of great optimism that it is the silver bullet
> that will yeild great B&W prints on my Epson 2200.  I've got a
> few simple questions.
> 
> (1) It appears to work only if the printer is USB connected.
> Will this change soon (to support FireWire connections) ?
> (No biggy, just gotta get a USB cable for the printer and a USB
> hub since I'm running out).
> 
> (2) There seems to be no way to switch between landscape and
> protrait orientations of the image on the paper.  It appears one
> must rotate a landscape-mode image 90-degrees in one's photoeditor
> and save it out before opening in OPM.  Is this rigth ?
> 
> (3) When using the up/down arrows for "scale", if you push the scale 
> UP to where the image is too big for the page, the arrows seem to
> freeze in this weird mode where it toggles between two scales and
> you can't get it to go back down below 100% (ok, this is more a
> bug report than a question).
> 
> (4) The download only had 2 profiles for the 2200; "warm" and "cold"
> for EAM/EEM paper.  How soon will add'l profiles be available
> (especially for the inksets everyone seems to think MIS will
> be supplying soon) ?
> 
> Thanks, John