Digital BW, The Print

Hi Keith,
I'll have a go here.  Unless you have a RIP, I don't think it will be
easy to get "neutral" b&w prints from either of these two printers
using standard Epson inksets.  I'm not sure if there is even a RIP
available for the R300, in any case, it'll be expensive.  You can fool
around with "black only" printing.

If you're willing to, I think your best bet is to buy refillable
cartridges for one of your printers and a b&w inkset.  This will mean,
of course, that you can no longer print color on that particular
printer.  Depending on the size of prints you're wanting to make, I
would probably start with the R300 - it has newer print technology. 
(My R220 seems to requires less head cleaning than my 1280 to get a
decent print.)

MIS (www.inksupply.com) has spongeless, refillable cartridges for the
R300 at $5.5 a piece and you would also need to buy the chips for them
which are $11.70 for a set.  Then you would need to buy the inks
themselves, chip resetter, syringes and some other stuff to fill the
cartridges.  So anyway, you're looking at over $100 to get started in
this.  (or you could buy a couple pre-filled carts for the 1290 and
try it out for a little less money.)

Even with the b&w inkset, I haven't found a standard workflow for my
b&w printing yet.  It's not like I press print and bam I have a print.
 It's usually several test prints before I have something close to
what I want.  In short, there's no one way to do this.  It will cost
some money to experiment with materials, and time to develop a work flow.

Check out the MIS website and also www.paulroark.com for some
information if you're just getting started in this.

Hope that helps some,
Earl

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "keithgreymamiya"
<keith101@...> wrote:
>
> Can any one give me some advice on Black and White printing. I am 
> pretty new to B&W digital printing, and can not believe how 
> difficult it appears to be. I have spent a great deal of time trying 
> to get neutral tones using my Epson R300 without a lot of success.
> There is always a colour cast, usually magenta.
> I am using standard Epson cartridges and a number of different 
> papers to no avail. (I have used printer profiles on some which 
> hasn't seemed to help) 
> I was then given an Epson 1290 to try, and when I tried it, it was 
> horrendous. The black and white prints had such a colour cast, they 
> looked like colour!
> My questions are 
> 1. Can I make neutral high quality B&W prints with either of these 
> printers, and if so, how.
> 2. If the answer to 1 is no, then what is a reasonably inexpensive 
> way to achieve the above.
> 
> And please try to keep the responses fairly simple, I am pretty new 
> to this game.
> 
> Thanks in anticipation.
> 
> Keith
>