Digital BW, The Print

Hello Peter,

>Does anyone have some ballpark settings of the Epson 1280 driver for 
>BO (black only) printing.  
>I had beautiful prints with MIS VM.  Right now with BO I've got a 
>nice looking gray scale when I print a step wedge, but things in the 
>mid-high range (like flesh tones) are printing a "zone" or more too 
>dark.  

> Also, do I need to mess with color space settings in Picture Window 
> Pro?  I don't use color management, but I've got the working space 
> set at Adobe RGB 1998 as per the hextone workflow.

Several things going on here, probably the work space/printer profile
settings are what's doing it.  To have full control in BO printing
I've found it's best to keep the image in Grayscale.  This limits the
work space setings (the "front end" profile) to the Dot Gain/Gray
Gamma choices.  

Briefly, you set the printer profile (the "back end" profile) to "Same
As Source".   This ensures that whatever front end profile you choose
doesn't affect the print.  Then you set the front end profile to
whatever setting makes the monitor image best match the print (trying
for good WYSIWYG).  If you aren't sure which to use, I recommend Dot
Gain 20% as a good starting point because it's in the middle of the
range of the available settings.  Once that is established, if you are
unhappy with the print you make changes to the image.

If this all sounds confusing, it is explained in much better detail in
article #4 on the web site link below.

Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm