Digital BW, The Print

This is an update on my progress with driving an Epson 7000 printer 
with QTR from a Mac / OS X and
using MIS UT/FS inks.

I realize even for this list this is a bit of an esoteric combination 
but "I have my reasons"

Anyway, after a couple of weeks of getting headaches, ( the brandy may 
have contributed to this)
I am now making very nice B&W prints from the afore mentioned set up.

The first issue I had to deal with was figuring out an appropriate ink 
descriptor file. The first guess of using the 1280/FS
file was wrong because it was based on a "5 shades of gray" ink set 
that was apparently just an experiment .
The current UT/FS ink set is only 3 grays and a black. I had filled 
carts with the ink order  black using the Eboni,
The Cyan and Lc positions both filled with the dark grey, the Magenta 
and Lm positions both with the middle grey, and the yellow with the
light gray.

I ended up using the Epson 3000/ FS descriptor file and filled in the 
extra ink positions to match the set up I had created.

After monkeying about with a number of the variables in the file, like 
the limits and the densities and the gamma settings,
and basically getting really bad posterization and flat spots in the 
tonalities and way to much ink hitting the paper, I reread
the instructions  yet again and realized that all that stuff about 
generating curves and linearization was there for a reason.

I'm still not sure if it's better to do the curves first or the 
linearization first but doing them both finally gave me a beautiful 
long scale
from a whisper of a light grey to a solid black.

While this software is a bit geeky, it does give the brave soul a lot 
of control over the process, and with the help of a densitometer,
the whole system seems rock solid.

Putting older printers like the 7000 and the 9000 to work as dedicated 
B&W machines is really a beautiful thing.

A special thanks to Roy from me.


J.Z.