Digital BW, The Print

I am thinking of getting a set of Piezography inks for B&W printing on 
my Epson 1800.  Has anyone had any experience with these inks on that 
printer?  Specifically, did they improve your prints noticeably?  Is it 
as easy as they claim to move back and forth between the Piezography 
cartridges for B&W and the Epson cartridges for clor printing? So far 
Quadtone RIP is giving me pretty good results in B&W with the regular 
set of Epson inks.

Hello Bcadigan

I've used the Cone NK7 inks in an Epson R800 (the smaller version of the
R1800 but with the same print heads).  I've been very happy with its output
which is in a completely different league to the 2100 with Bowhaus RIP and
Ultrachrome inks that I used previously.  I would expect your improvement to
be on a similar scale, perhaps more so due to the single black/grey in the
R800/R1800.  The only drawbacks to the system are that it won't print on
glossy and the tone is fixed (albeit variable with paper choice), however
neither have proved to be a particular handicap to me so that I am now
looking for a reasonably priced R1800 so that I can move up a size.

David Whistance

  -----Original Message-----
  From: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of bcadigan
  Sent: 26 November 2006 19:03
  To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
  Subject: [Digital BW] Piezography Inks with R1800 & Quadtone RIP


  I am thinking of getting a set of Piezography inks for B&W printing on
  my Epson 1800. Has anyone had any experience with these inks on that
  printer? Specifically, did they improve your prints noticeably? Is it
  as easy as they claim to move back and forth between the Piezography
  cartridges for B&W and the Epson cartridges for clor printing? So far
  Quadtone RIP is giving me pretty good results in B&W with the regular
  set of Epson inks.



  


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

Thanks for the feedback. It's consistent with what I've heard 
elswhere.  Better quality but only one tone.

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "David 
Whistance" <david.whistance@...> wrote:
>
> Hello Bcadigan
> 
> I've used the Cone NK7 inks in an Epson R800 (the smaller version 
of the
> R1800 but with the same print heads).  I've been very happy with 
its output
> which is in a completely different league to the 2100 with Bowhaus 
RIP and
> Ultrachrome inks that I used previously.  I would expect your 
improvement to
> be on a similar scale, perhaps more so due to the single black/grey 
in the
> R800/R1800.  The only drawbacks to the system are that it won't 
print on
> glossy and the tone is fixed (albeit variable with paper choice), 
however
> neither have proved to be a particular handicap to me so that I am 
now
> looking for a reasonably priced R1800 so that I can move up a size.
> 
> David Whistance
> 
>   -----Original Message-----
>   From: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of 
bcadigan
>   Sent: 26 November 2006 19:03
>   To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
>   Subject: [Digital BW] Piezography Inks with R1800 & Quadtone RIP
> 
> 
>   I am thinking of getting a set of Piezography inks for B&W 
printing on
>   my Epson 1800. Has anyone had any experience with these inks on 
that
>   printer? Specifically, did they improve your prints noticeably? 
Is it
>   as easy as they claim to move back and forth between the 
Piezography
>   cartridges for B&W and the Epson cartridges for clor printing? So 
far
>   Quadtone RIP is giving me pretty good results in B&W with the 
regular

>   set of Epson inks.
> 
> 
> 
>   
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

In a message dated 11/27/06 1:33:16 AM, bcadigan@... writes:


> I am thinking of getting a set of Piezography inks for B&W printing on
> my Epson 1800.  Has anyone had any experience with these inks on that
> printer?  Specifically, did they improve your prints noticeably?  Is it
> as easy as they claim to move back and forth between the Piezography
> cartridges for B&W and the Epson cartridges for clor printing? So far
> Quadtone RIP is giving me pretty good results in B&W with the regular
> set of Epson inks.
> 

Any of the desktop printers are fairly straighforward to change inksets on. 
The R800/R1800 printers, by having extra primaries make for rather more 
difficult printers to produce tinted inksets for use via the OEM driver, so are 
generally avoided for this (besides you can get great results for this from a $99 
R2xx series printer, a more costly R800 isn't really necessary; or a 1280 
instead of the more expensive R1800). So if you go with converting an R800/R1800 to 
B&W, its typically going to be a more involved, RIP-bases solution, where the 
extra channels are just extra channels for some RIP-based seperation scheme, 
not extra primaries in the OEM driver.

The R800/R1800 with OEM ink colors are optimized for color, not for B&W; 
those extra primaries don't do anything for grayscale (actually, with the OEM 
driver, they don't do all that much for color gamut either, oddly enough), but 
they could do a lot for grayscale if converted... but then you need to use a RIP, 
and special curves or channel controls etc. for those extra inks, since they 
no longer fit the OEM logic of how the printer functions. So OEM ink grayscale 
printing is much better on the R2400 than the R1800; you'll see a bigger 
improvement moving to a grayscale inkset for the R1800 than you would for the 
R2400.

C. David Tobie
Product Technology Manager
ColorVision Business Unit
Datacolor Inc.
CDTobie@...
www.colorvision.com


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

You can go up a significant step in quality without giving up either 
color, or matte/RC printing simply by using an LK in place of the gloss 
cart. The only (minor) draw-backs are: 
1)that some glossy papers show a bit of gloss differential. I stick to 
satin-semigloss papers. 
2) There are no 'canned' curves for this configuration-you'll have to 
learn to make your own if you haven't already. It's not too hard, and 
if you use Tom Moore's 'ideal densities' charts ( to linearize your 
curves) at the back of the user's guide, you can get outstanding 
results without a densitometer.

Steve Karafyllakis

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "bcadigan" 
<bcadigan@...> wrote:
>
> I am thinking of getting a set of Piezography inks for B&W printing 
on 
> my Epson 1800.  Has anyone had any experience with these inks on that 
> printer?  Specifically, did they improve your prints noticeably?  Is 
it 

> as easy as they claim to move back and forth between the Piezography 
> cartridges for B&W and the Epson cartridges for clor printing? So far 
> Quadtone RIP is giving me pretty good results in B&W with the regular 
> set of Epson inks.
>

I've got quite nice results toning with bibble pro's tony toning plugin 
and printing with r1800 using oem inks. The results are very good and 
without bad colourcasts. Especially the silver-gelatine emulation looks  
good. Bibble pro has also a good  plugin for converting raw images  to 
B&W, andy.

I have also qtr, and like too the results, but toned B&W has more punch, 
the qtr greyscale looks little bit flat.  (I'm not yet ready to hack the 
curves)

-matti

CDTobie@... wrote:

"The R800/R1800 with OEM ink colors are optimized for color, not for 
B&W; those extra primaries don't do anything for grayscale 
(actually, with the OEM driver, they don't do all that much for 
color gamut either, oddly enough), but they could do a lot for 
grayscale if converted... but then you need to use a RIP, and 
special curves or channel controls etc. for those extra inks, since 
they no longer fit the OEM logic of how the printer functions. So 
OEM ink grayscale printing is much better on the R2400 than the 
R1800; you'll see a bigger improvement moving to a grayscale inkset 
for the R1800 than you would for the R2400."

---------------------------------------------------------------------

just trying to understand you correctly, do you think it might be 
worth testing out a neutral gray inkset in an R1800 while leaving in 
the original Red and Blue to try and effect the hue. You see I've 
got a redundant R1800 and I'm trying to find something useful for it 
to do, by the way I'm quite happy playing around with RIP's and 
spectro's,

Jamie