Digital BW, The Print

I have been using the EZ inks in an Epson C82 for almost a year now 
for some of my less critical work.  I still have not completely sure 
how i feel about output quality.  For more critical work I am still 
using an epson 1160 printer with the cone driver and MIS ink.  What 
conclusions have other EZ ink users come to?

howdy....for anyone following this thread, I have done a bunch more 
prints this week. Keep in mind that I am an amature mostly, but 
occasionally get little jobs working for my fellow musician friends 
putting promo packages together. That means a nice feeling glossy print 
that people will take out of an envelope and look pretty closely.

Paul roark tipped us onto this costco glossy paper made in switzerland, 
for use with the UT2/Eboni inks. Super cheap! 20 bucks for 125 
sheets.....it bronzes just a little, but the surface really works well 
with print sheild spray. You could get away with no spray, but the 
spray will probably make the prints fade less, and you maybe could 
spill coffee on them lets say, and wipe it off, and stick it back in 
the envelope....also, the image quality is great. Really really good. 
As good as photo rag. The only hang that I had was that the sliders ( i 
use the sliders method, and dial out the eboni ink. If you use photo 
black i guess you would not need that step.

Here are the slider settings that I have come up with to get a pretty 
neutral print. It is actually on the warm side of neutral, but all of 
the cooler settings had a magenta look in the shadows.

brightness =0
contrast=2
cyan =0
magenta =  negative 8
yellow = 0

that is quite a lot diferent than the settings for ilford smooth pearl, 
or epson cheap glossy, which are the glossy papers that most people use 
to try to get a decent glossy print with the UT2 inks.

just in case you want to try the paper, those settings will probably 
help you waste less paper and ink!

The paper exaggerates the magenta shadows, and also exaggerates the 
cyan slider. Kind of like how ilford smooth exaggerates the yellow 
slider.
For ilford and epson I have to bump the brightness way up to like +8

for what it's worth.......happy holidays, DOug M

just read my own post, and I left out the part where I explain what my 
only hang was with using the sliders on costco paper....the hang was 
simply that the paper reacts o lot diferently than other golssy papers. 
The sliders have a more pronounced effect.......somehow when I wrote 
the other post, my mind shifted in mid-sentence, and  the way I wrote 
it sounds real stupid.......I have a masters degree...Honest

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Douglas Meeuwsen
<lipshurt@m...> wrote:
>the way I wrote 
> it sounds real stupid.......I have a masters degree...Honest

Yeh, so what's that prove? George Bush has one, too.
;-)

Phil

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Phil Rose" 
<pjrose@f...> wrote:
> 
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Douglas 
Meeuwsen
> <lipshurt@m...> wrote:
> >the way I wrote 
> > it sounds real stupid.......I have a masters degree...Honest
> 
> Yeh, so what's that prove? George Bush has one, too.
> ;-)
> 
> Phil

None of this has anything to do wiyh my post?!?!?!?!?!?

I've been using a C84 with the EZ inks on Epson Enhanced Matte for about 
5 months now.  Side by side with prints from my Canon S9000 with Lyson 
Quad Black inks on Legion Matte, I think the Canon/Lyson/Legion prints 
have better resolution, and of course the Canon is about 3 times the 
speed of the Epson.  But I'd rather look at the Epson/EZ/EEM prints.  So 
when it came time to produce 750 or so prints that get bound into books 
as Christmas presents for various family members (a tradition of 20+ 
years' standing now - I can't quit) I chose to go with the slower but, 
to me, more attractive, Epson prints.

BTW, I'm using neutral inks in the C and Y positions, with warm ink in 
the M position.

I'm about to order another C84 to have as a backup, as I don't expect 
the C84 to have the longevity of the more expensive Canon printer.  With 
the $20 Epson rebate still on, the C84 is only a few dollars more than 
the retail cost of the included inks.

Cheers,
Kip

lancscott wrote:

>I have been using the EZ inks in an Epson C82 for almost a year now 
>for some of my less critical work.  I still have not completely sure 
>how i feel about output quality.  For more critical work I am still 
>using an epson 1160 printer with the cone driver and MIS ink.  What 
>conclusions have other EZ ink users come to?
>  
>