Digital BW, The Print

Five settings:Light to Darkest. The manual gives the following 
explantion for Dark - applies a soft tone to your photos. What exactly 
do Epson mean by this. Has anyone figured out what these settings 
actually do.

Peter.

Gamma changes.  Just pick one - I suggest the default Darker - and change
your image in PS rather than using the driver as an editor.

> From: bwbonkers <PeterDLevis@...>

> 
> Five settings:Light to Darkest. The manual gives the following
> explantion for Dark - applies a soft tone to your photos. What exactly
> do Epson mean by this. Has anyone figured out what these settings
> actually do.
> 
> Peter.

Hello Peter,

>Five settings:Light to Darkest. The manual gives the following 
>explantion for Dark - applies a soft tone to your photos. What 
>exactly do Epson mean by this. Has anyone figured out what these 
>settings actually do.

I can't explain Epson's statement, but it basically alters the print's
over all density.  To find what works best for you I recommend the
following: take a well exposed digicam image, convert it to grayscale
using your preferred method, and before doing any other manipulations
to it, make a few small prints at these different settings, including
Lightest, Normal, and Darkest (all other settings being the same). 
Choose the one which gives you an over all density that you feel is
closest to what you want to end up with.  This will reduce the amount
of work the image needs to achieve your final result.  

Article #9 on my web site (link below) describes a workflow for
the 2400, with step by step discussion of this and other settings.


Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm

> From: Clayton Jones <cj@...>

> 
> I can't explain Epson's statement, but it basically alters the print's
> over all density.

Except the end points, ie it is a gamma change.

>To find what works best for you I recommend the
> following: take a well exposed digicam image, convert it to grayscale
> using your preferred method, and before doing any other manipulations
> to it, make a few small prints at these different settings, including
> Lightest, Normal, and Darkest (all other settings being the same).
> Choose the one which gives you an over all density that you feel is
> closest to what you want to end up with.  This will reduce the amount
> of work the image needs to achieve your final result.

The default setting seems well-calibrated to a GG 2.2 workspace.  You are,
however, much better off using PS as your image editor rather than the Epson
driver (except for hue where the tint picker and tone selectors are very
cool). Better yet, profile the output of the Adv B&W driver for the settings
of your choice (eg the defaults) and convert your document to the relevant
profile on its way out of PS.

People are free to share QTR Create ICC profiles with other uses who have
paid their QTR shareware fee.  Profiles for each of the 4 key settings (each
with the default Darker setting) would go a long long way.

Steve + Clayton many thanks for your replies.

Peter.

Is there any central repository of shared profiles for various 
different papers?  I looked in the file section of both this forum and 
the QTR forum and didn't see any?

Brian
--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Steve Kale 
<stevekale@b...> wrote:
>
> 
> People are free to share QTR Create ICC profiles with other uses who 
have
> paid their QTR shareware fee.  Profiles for each of the 4 key 
settings (each
> with the default Darker setting) would go a long long way.
>