Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/03/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Martin: I, like many, tried to do B&W prints with color inks, in my case, on an Epson 1280. My home-grown efforts were OK, but I never was able to get rid of green or magenta casts. And the casts varied in the various shades of gray. I got close, but never perfect. A friend of mine has been able to do it, but only with everything in the equipment chain finely calibrated. Given that the colors do shift over time, it may be gray today, green tomorrow. And the metamerism issue is very real--balance a print for daylight, and it will look magenta under tungsten and green under flourescent. Or the dark tones will be OK but the light tones will go weird on you. I now use the Paul Roarke curves and MIS inks, and I've been quite pleased with them. The Epson 1280 driver has some very abrupt transitions, but using the 1290 driver (from Epson's UK site) and Paul's 1290 curves has solved that problem. I would highly recommend going with quadtones. Either Piezography or the Roarke/MIS solution will work. Metamerism does exist with the quads, particularly the ones that can be "toned" cold or warm, but it's nowhere near the issue it is with the color prints. Piezography is more plug and play, and has many built-in paper profiles. But it requires Photoshop, and significant numbers of people have had problems with printhead clogging. It used to be much more expensive, but now that's less of an issue after the initial outlay. MIS uses the Epson driver, and thus will work with any program that can import Photoshop color curves (I use Picture Window Pro). There are far less reports of clogging. With the supplied curves, you can use any paper you want, as long as it's Epson Archival Matte (and Matte Heavyweight is, according to Paul, almost the same). Other papers require the tweaking of curves. It's somewhat more economical, and the guy who wrote the curves has basically given them to the user community. So it's sort of like a Linux situation--MIS sells the ink, but we've all got our thumbs in the pie. Curves seem to come out for most of the popular printers. I can't agree with the "TV dinner" comment, although I appreciate Jim's wit. Once things are properly set up, inkjet prints can be beautiful. Different from silver, not as romantic as watching the image appear in a tray, sure. But you don't have to smell hypo all day, you have more control over the process, and once an image is set, the results are repeatable. Hope this helps, - --Peter Klein Seattle, WA At 04:42 PM 3/19/03 -0800, Martin Howard wrote: >So, will I be shelling out on the $195 Piezography BW set for the Canon >i950 when it arrives? Probably, yes. The reason is metamerism. I'm >guessing that quadblack inks exhibit considerably less of this (if any >at all) simply because the inks only contain black. I'm guessing that >metamerism in inkjet printers chiefly comes from the fact that the >various dyes or pigments reflect light of different wavelengths >differently from >each other. Using the same (black) ink at various dilutions shouldn't >present this problem. While it doesn't bother me all that much, it >makes it harder to send prints to other people, not knowing what light they >are going to view them under. - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html