Digital BW, The Print

Hi all,

This is a xpost, I also posted on the Luminous Landscape forum, not
knowing how many people read both.
Pls let me know if this is bad practice.

I am trying to best understand the meaning of all the settings of the
Epson ABW driver (I have a R2880)

I ran some experiments.
I used the very useful test image Keith Cooper posted on his web site:

http://tinyurl.com/5dm645

I learned a little bit about the meaning of the driver's setting from
http://tinyurl.com/27jojl

In all my trials I used:
QIMAGE 2009.09
ABW
Printer profile: sRGB (see Eric's post)
Intent: Relative colorimetric (again, see Eric's post)
Colormunki to read the patches
Paper: Epson Ultra Premium Luster

Test 1: Color Control/Advanced/Tone left to the default "neutral"
setting (corresponds to darker, if I remember well)
Test 2: Color Control/Advanced/Tone set to "normal"

What I saw is:

The "darker" print is darker than screen (calibrated monitor), and the
L* of the 21-step wedge has a reasonably linear shape.
The "normal" print is still darker than screen, the L* has a shape
that looks like a PS curve to enhance the dark tones.
The print in this case really does have much more detail in the dark
shadow areas, the same as the picture shown on the PC screen.
The Dmax, which is affected by the max ink, does not change

Since this is called the "tone" control I assume it is normal that it
would just modify the shape of the L* and not, for example, the ink limit.

The questions I have are:
- Why would epson set the default to something that makes the print so
much darker ?
- The setup that has a linear L* does come out very dark, but all
experts say that you should linearize your profile.
However, if I use a linear profile then I'm getting an image with no
detail in the shadwos.

I'm sure there's something I'm not getting, but don't know what.

Thank you for your help.

Marco