Digital BW, The Print

Thanks, Bob and Clayton.  When you both mentioned dot gain, I 
thought, "Wait a minute, I'm using Picture Window Pro, not Photoshop, 
and it doesn't do dot gain."  Then I realized that Paul Roarke had 
included a grayscale printing curve with some of his inksets. Hmm, I 
thought, maybe that does what the dot gain profiles do.

I had one from the Epson 1290 VM set, so I ran a grayscale image 
through it, and things got a lot lighter on the screen.  It just 
finished printing as I write this, and things are looking a whole lot 
better.

Thanks for jogging my memory in the right direction!

--Peter

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Clayton Jones" 
<cj@c...> wrote:
> 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