Black and White Printing On the Epson 1160 or 2200?
2005-09-02 by dailydonut2000
I thought I might share some information that took me quite a lot of
time and money to get.I,like a lot of people,had been going crazy
trying to get decent black and white prints out of my Epson 2200. As
far as color,I HAD given up.Everything was flat and lifeless due to
the small gamut from the epson pigmented inks,the prints bronzed
like you would not believe,and 8x10 prints from my $70 HP 1210
printer looked much better whether it was color or black and
white.Finally I stumbled onto Clayton Jones Black Only printing
scheme.I switched out the Epson black ink cartridge,installed an
Ebony Black cartridge(ARC-T0348-K)from MIS(www.inksupply.com),ran a
few cleaning cycles to flush the epson ink out,and boy was I happy!
The prints are outstanding.No,they don't look like prints made from
an inkjet using all the colors.No,they don't look like chemically
made prints.They look more like an etching.If you print at 2880 dpi
the dots others complain about are just minutely noticible.You have
to put your nose to the paper to see them.Barely.The prints have
incredible contrast,and on the right paper should last over a
hundred years if they're framed and matted correctly.I love the look
on Epson Enhanced Matt, but have grave doubts that this paper will
last.For as long as it lasts, and that should still be decades,it's
a great bargain.For truly archival prints the Epson Velvet Fine Art
will do nicely, and has a warm glow to it.Not all images will work
for B.O. printing, so you have to do some proofing on Heavyweight
Matt at smaller sizes to find the ones that do, but I guarantee the
results are worth it.
Recently I moved,and the only thing that was damaged was, of
course,the 2200 printer.It died.So,in an attempt to economize,I
found an 1160 printer on E-Bay for a lil more than $100....Maybe I
could replace the 2200 cheaply this way I thought.The first color
prints were great.Better than the best I ever got from the 2200
using Epson inks.Of course they were dye inks in the 1160 and
wouldn't be permanent,but at some point I decided that having a
great image for a while was better than having a lousy image for the
rest of my life!I made the mistake of buying MIS Archival Black ink
from Inksupply and was not fond of the greenish cast to the
prints.My fault, as this ink is apparantly designed to work with
their archival color inks for color printing.I replaced the
cartridge with the MIS Ebony Black and printed out a shot of a
waterfall at 12x18 size and compared it to my 2200 print.It looked
really good,but in the end resolution won out.The 2880 dpi print
from the 2200 was noticibly smoother than the 1160 print at it's top
dpi of 1440.Size,or in this case dpi, does matter.I have since
purchased another 2200, but the 1160 is going to be hard to sell.It
is a lot simpler printer to use, and I may keep it just for the
color prints it can do.I fixed the bronzing from the 2200 by going
to Media Street inks.Good luck using the Epson inks because you are
going to need it.I had also tried using the quadtone printing
process and decided it was unnecessarily expensive and was inferior
to the B.O. prints in image quality for my tastes.Others might have
different tastes.The only downside to printing B.O. on the 2200 is
that it uses up the color inks on the cleaning cycles at a
prodigious rate.MIS sells empty clear cartridges for the 2200, and a
chip resetter,and cleaning solution.Just replace the color
cartridges when you are printing B.O. runs with the clear ones,top
them up with cleaner solution,and you are set to go.I don't mean for
this to sound like a commercial for MIS,but what can I say?They are
extremely knowledgeable and professional, their products work,and
they fixed my printing problems on the epson printers
100%.Steve.