Rather what I meant was ... someone who wanted to print using ABW could use QTR-Create-ICC-RGB to create an ICC profile for ABW. They'd need to avoid the silent conversion problem in doing so. But having done so they could then use the ICC to soft-proof, and then in the PS print dialog they select PS manages colours and select the QTR-generated ICC profile, and in the printer settings select ABW. You can do this on Windows easily enough. I don't have access to an OS X copy of PS to check whether it's possible there too - there were earlier suggestions that it's not.
I *think* there was an earlier comment in this thread from Eugene to the effect that ABW wasn't that far from linear. That's not what I found when I've measured it, not by a very long shot. I don't understand what Epson were trying to achieve when they designed its behaviour. But there are a lot of people out there who think it's wonderful. I guess you can adapt to anything.
What the QTR-generated ICCs can do is give an ABW user is some predictability and control. You can either adopt a workflow like the one I described in the second para, although converting to the ICC raises the same issues of crushing shadow detail as you get when convert and print via QTR. Or you can adopt the preserve numbers soft-proof approach and not convert when printing via ABW, but then you still have to avoid the silent conversion problem at print time.
---In QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com, <info@...> wrote :
A QTR user may have created an ICC for ABW that they could use, but that's not typical, and not all QTR users would want to do that anyway.
Brian,
Could you help me understand what a Windows QTR user would be doing printing from Photoshop if he didn’t have a QTR profile. I’m having trouble seeing the «QTR » part of the QTR user. Is there a way of importing a QIDF curve into the Epson ABW driver on Windows or some other point of entry after sending the file from Photoshop? I can’t see why a windows QTR user without a QTR profile wouldn’t just be printing through the GUI.
Paul