QTR-Quadtone RIP

--- In QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com, Ernst Dinkla <E.Dinkla@...> wrote:
..
> Tyler, it is hardware but with enough monochrome inks aboard. 

See Ernst, here's one area where where many of us part ways. I believe the HP has 4? I have 
been able to bring 4 mono inks forward in quality only because of recent developments in 
the software I use allowing me to manipulate dot size combinations on a per ink level and 
giving me options in how dots are mixed when multiple inks are assigned to specific tonal 
areas. The transitions between inks are now better, smoother, describing more levels of 
gray in those transitions and even describing more file detail information. When inks of 
subtly different hues are combined in different ways using these tools yet another way of 
working with tonal presence comes into play in a way I've never seen on paper from any 
combination of gray inks and saturated color inks dithered together.
This only happened recently, and in fact I actually never use only 4, 5 at a minimum. The 
results I've seen from even more grays seems astonishingly more photographic than ever, 
and has gone unheralded as many of these users have left these forums to go print. I wish 
I had another printer to play with more dilutions in a mono set.
But because in the past 4, or even 3, was "enough", many people have not even seen a 
print made from more grays. 3 or 4 "sounds" like it should be enough.
4 was enough when the resulting prints were better than the options. Things have evolved 
considerably and now we have options that clearly show more is better.
This increase in the number of available grays has also changed the way of thinking about 
how they combine on paper. Only 4 required the partitioning to be done specifically and 
correctly, within certain limits, or image quality would suffer.

> Since when did that stop us to make it better than intended by 
> the engineers ?

Because of the help of people like you and others over the years, never. But you know as 
well as I what we did, we dumped those OEM inks out and started over and used different 
drivers and forced control into our hands. Obviously QTR has played a major role in a lot 
of this.
But please don't get me wrong. I'm ready for a talented printer to put a piece in front of 
me from the HP solution untinkered, and have it knock my socks off.
In the meantime I'm sure these products will help a lot of people out there, and I'm very 
glad Epson will have some competition. It's an interesting time, particularly off in the little 
niche I've witnessed.
Tyler