Digital BW, The Print

Now that some of us have begun printing on the Epson 3800, I was
wondering if anyone could offer some suggestions about printing
parameters for the machine to handle Photo Rag 308 (matt black ink, of
course). With only Espon papers listed, I'm not sure how to ask the
machine to accomodate the thickness of the paper,etc. 

Thanks, Chuck

Chuck- to accomodate the art stocks, here are my findings:

For Crane Museo Silver Rag, I have made a Custom Configuration at the printer LCD panel. 
(doing it there allows you to run an alignment pattern and adjust) I set the gap to wide, the 
thickness to 5, ran the alignment page, selected 5 as the one that looked perfectly aligned, 
and left the other adjustments untouched. Then from my desktop, you can remotely 
access that panel by using the Print Set-up Utility, the selecting LFP Remote Panel, and 
selecting Media  Adjustment, then Activate Custom paper. You need to press the "Activate" 
button, not just select it. (This will then give you the same platten gap and thickness as 
Epson Ultra-Smooth Fine Art paper, I believe). I had to do this because I was using Crane 
Museo Silver Rag, and but that thick paper requires the thinner Epson Premium Lustre 
Photo Paper Media Selection (Photo Black ink).

For the Art Stocks like Hahnemuhle Photo Rag, Hahnemuhle has a Paper Handling 
Instructions as a PDF that recommends media settings based on what type of Hahnemuhle 
you are using. If you are using a thick Hahnemuhle stock, and select an  Epson Media 
Selection that is also a thick stock, you are good to go. But if Hahnemuhle suggests using 
an Epson Media Selection of a paper thinner than what you are printing on, then I suggest 
going with the Custom Config as described above, as the edges of that thick paper may hit 
the head as it passes over it and give you little balck head contact specks on the very 
edges.

http://www.hahnemuehle.com/site/us/1014/epson.html

Hahnemule recommends Perceptual Rendering Intent with BPC unchecked, but try Rel and 
BPC checked to see for yourself. They have their 3800 profiles in the same as their 4800 
profiles, so try them and see if they are indeed "cross machine" profiles. hahnemuhle also 
has Photo Black ink and matte Black ink profiles for the same art stocks so you can 
experiment.

I have started some threads on the Luminous-Landscape Forum regarding this printer as 
well.

http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showforum=6

I've actually been printing very successfully on photo rag duo and  
photo rag 308 using the Epson Velvet Fine Art setting.

Cheers,

Wayne

Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/
Blog  http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/
Publisher, Experimental Digital Photography http:// 
www.experimentaldigitalphotography.com
Coordindinator of Studies, Multimedia and Photomedia, Australian  
Academy of Design
Personal art site http://www.artinyourface.com/
wayne@...





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