Digital BW, The Print

After following a recommendation about the Ilford Smooth Pearl paper, I have made
some decent b/w prints. However, they are not truly b/w. They have a very slight 
sepia/brownish tone.

Is it possible to get excellent b/w prints from the standard Ultrachrome inkset? I 
admire and respect all of the customization techniques, ie Paul's curves and UT or 
Quad inks, which I'm not familiar with, but why can't I trust my own photoshop levels 
and curves with the standard inks and get some good results?

What's the point of borderless printing or minimized margins if the print quality 
stinks at the edge of the image (at least on a portrait orientation).

What is the best paper to use to get the equivalent of a nice fiber print? The Velvet 
Fine Art is not smooth like a traditional fiber.

Thanks,

glen

It's not the ink set, it's the drivers.  I have read a couple of comments on here that people have been able to get good b&w results after 'tweaking' the Epson software, I was not able to do that.  That's why Imageprint exists.  To make better use of the printer than Epson software seems to be able to do.  I get great b&w prints from the Ultrachrome ink set.
 
As for paper, I haven't found one that is very close to the traditional fiber based silver paper.  Perhaps others can comment on that.
 
Tom Baker

gdicrocco <gdicrocco@...> wrote:

After following a recommendation about the Ilford Smooth Pearl paper, I have made
some decent b/w prints. However, they are not truly b/w. They have a very slight 
sepia/brownish tone.

Is it possible to get excellent b/w prints from the standard Ultrachrome inkset? I 
admire and respect all of the customization techniques, ie Paul's curves and UT or 
Quad inks, which I'm not familiar with, but why can't I trust my own photoshop levels 
and curves with the standard inks and get some good results?

What's the point of borderless printing or minimized margins if the print quality 
stinks at the edge of the image (at least on a portrait orientation).

What is the best paper to use to get the equivalent of a nice fiber print? The Velvet 
Fine Art is not smooth like a traditional fiber.

Thanks,

glen


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

Glen,
I had the same problems with the 2200. I was about to buy a RIP software
when I tried one more time with the "out of the box" printer software.
I either use one of my digital photos and make it grayscale in Photoshop or
scan one of my b/w negatives.
Edit the photo any way you wish but before you print it, make it an RGB
file, not grayscale.
I use Epson Matt paper and use the Epson ICC profile that came with the
printer for that paper.
Using this setup, I now get excellent b/w prints.

Hope this helps,
Jake
www.jakehellbachphoto.com

  -----Original Message-----

  After following a recommendation about the Ilford Smooth Pearl paper, I
have made
  some decent b/w prints. However, they are not truly b/w. They have a very
slight
  sepia/brownish tone.



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

> From: Jake Hellbach [mailto:jake@...]
>
> I had the same problems with the 2200. I was about to buy a RIP software
> when I tried one more time with the "out of the box" printer software.
> I either use one of my digital photos and make it grayscale in
> Photoshop or
> scan one of my b/w negatives.
> Edit the photo any way you wish but before you print it, make it an RGB
> file, not grayscale.
> I use Epson Matt paper and use the Epson ICC profile that came with the
> printer for that paper.
> Using this setup, I now get excellent b/w prints.

I had the same experience with printing B&W images, so I suspect a driver
bug. However, converting the image to RGB still left me with some noticeable
color cast. I suspect the printer-to-printer variation is significant.

--

Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
Paul                mailto:pderocco@...

You currently have a few choices for getting good B&W output from the 
2200, depending on your platform (PC or Mac), and the Epson driver is 
not one of them.  Try one or more of the following:

QuadToneRIP (Mac OS X or Linux)
http://www.harrington.com/QuadToneRIP.html
IJC/OPM (Mac OS 9)
http://www.bowhaus.com/inkjetcontrol/
Septones (Mac or PC)
http://www.bwguys.com/septone.aspx
ImagePrint (Mac OS X or PC)
http://www.colorbytesoftware.com/

Also, check the archives for discussions and comparisons of each of 
these alternatives.

On Wednesday, October 22, 2003, at 04:41  PM, Jake Hellbach wrote:

> Glen,
> I had the same problems with the 2200. I was about to buy a RIP 
> software
> when I tried one more time with the "out of the box" printer software.
> I either use one of my digital photos and make it grayscale in 
> Photoshop or
> scan one of my b/w negatives.
> Edit the photo any way you wish but before you print it, make it an RGB
> file, not grayscale.
> I use Epson Matt paper and use the Epson ICC profile that came with the
> printer for that paper.
> Using this setup, I now get excellent b/w prints.
>
> Hope this helps,
> Jake
> www.jakehellbachphoto.com
>   -----Original Message-----

I recently tried a recommendation from Paul Schrantz in the "Matering 
Digital Photography" piece from PhotoTechniques.  Basically, take a 
grayscale image, convert to RGB and print in the ColorMatch color 
space.  Appearantly the limited gamut of Colorspace helps.  It worked 
better than the gray balancer and dot gain curves for me and seems 
pretty neutral to my admittedly ameteur eye.  I'm working with EAM.  
It is easy and worth trying.  

Mark

  --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "gdicrocco" 
<gdicrocco@e...> wrote:
> 
> After following a recommendation about the Ilford Smooth Pearl 
paper, I have made
> some decent b/w prints. However, they are not truly b/w. They have 
a very slight 
> sepia/brownish tone.
> 
> Is it possible to get excellent b/w prints from the standard 
Ultrachrome inkset? I 
> admire and respect all of the customization techniques, ie Paul's 
curves and UT or 
> Quad inks, which I'm not familiar with, but why can't I trust my 
own photoshop levels 
> and curves with the standard inks and get some good results?
> 
> What's the point of borderless printing or minimized margins if the 
print quality 
> stinks at the edge of the image (at least on a portrait 
orientation).
> 
> What is the best paper to use to get the equivalent of a nice fiber 
print? The Velvet 

> Fine Art is not smooth like a traditional fiber.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> glen