Digital BW, The Print

Hi all,

Clayton said >>Your (Walker) report is the first time I heard that one
printer model may produce different metamerism than another. I'm just
wondering if the paper and settings used may have been the difference,
rather than the prnter model. What do you think?

I think one variable that might be driving the divide in ABW opinion in this
thread, is which generation of Epson printer you have tried / seen ABW
prints from. Epson has continued to improve ABW dramatically with each
printer version. I used it on the 4800 and the 7880 - big step jump in the
ABW dithering quality between the two printers, same settings same paper
just different printers. With the 4800 IMO glossy ABW was unusable because
of the colour banding in the dithering. But with the 7880 that was
effectively gone. In matte the 7880 again has better dithering, it looks
better than the 4800 but not as dramatically better as the glossy prints.
Walker also comments that the 11880 was way better than the x800.

So I think all of you that don't believe in ABW should have the courage to
take a look at some ABW prints from the latest Epson printers, by a skilled
printer.

However that said, ABW has some real limitations;

1) it doesn't support split toning
2) it has very poor shadow control even using ICC
3) it uses quite a bit of coloured ink in the mix - especially if you want
gentle sepia toning and the Epson yellow is a fast fade ink.... -  this is
the killer for me. I am not fanatical about fade resistance, but I do want
my prints "colour" to last say 20 years. Could be solved by loading an light
carbon ink in place of Y, but that would upset colour printing, require PK /
MK switch as well, all expensive on ink and a pain to switch.

1 & 2 are solvable by using QTR and Epson inks. Solving (3) requires one or
more non-Epson inks.

Also I wanted to experiment with the R1900 small 1.5pl dot size on hand held
prints and this also allows me to load up a number of different custom ink
sets without the huge cost of doing that in LF (cartridges and ink
costs). All that lead me to using custom ink sets in R1900s.

Meanwhile Epson is clearly continuing to up its game with the x900 printers.
Looking at the Aardenburg 9900 ABW result so far, there is fade in density,
but "neutrality" remains almost perfect. Epson has clearly managed to
control the ink fade in the 9900 ABW mix, for maintaining "colour".
Unfortunately if you look at the 9900 colour print fade tests the Yellow ink
is still the Achilles heel, which suggests that sepia splits will not be
very fade resistant.

To conclude, there are a number of digital choices available, all have
strengths and weaknesses, but in the right hands I think they are all
capable of creating great prints with relative ease (compared to analogue)
and that's what I find exciting.

Mike




On 9 April 2010 07:30, ClaytonJ <cj@...> wrote:

>
>
>
>
> Hello Walker,
>
> Interesting post, thanks. I enjoyed reading through the list of systems
> you've used - you certainly have a lot of perseverance.
>
> I have some comments about ABW metamerism. It's an important subject and
> wasn't mentioned in the other threads. I've used a 2400 approaching five
> years now (will be 5 in August), and during that time I've tested lots of
> different papers for my "Paper Chase" review page. It was a unique
> opportunity to see how the inks react on a wide variety of papers.
>
> I've found that some papers take K3 inks beautifully, where it's easy to
> find tone settings that look great and exhibit little or no metamerism (I
> test under 5 different light sources here: real daylight, full spectrum
> flourescents, pure incandescent, mixed incandescent + 5000k compact
> fluorescent, and a pure 6500k compact fluorescent).
>
> There have been other papers with which I never could get a satisfactory
> result. The most notable example was HPR. It was a favorite when I used
> Eboni based inks - the best Dmax and beautiful tones. Naturally when I got
> the 2400 it was one of the first I tried. It was an exercise in frustration
> and I spent an ungodly amount of time, ink and paper trying unsuccessfully
> to make it work. I never could find a setting that didn't look colorized
> (some hint of green or pink) and metamerism up the wazoo. In addition, the
> Dmax wasn't near as good as with Eboni. For whatever reason, HPR and K3 are
> not a good match (I've often wondered if people who didn't like ABW were
> trying to use their favorite HPR with it and gave up on it).
>
> At the other end, I discovered that VFA, which with Eboni had good but not
> great Dmax and just ok general appearance, became with K3 the highest Dmax
> paper of them all and has really beautiful tones and a wonderful glow. Just
> gorgeous prints. With my favorite nearly neutral, slightly warm tone it
> exhibits little or no metamerism.
>
> Other papers had various degrees of the above characteristics. Some worked
> easily and some were difficult. The point is that the ABW system is
> persnickity and different degrees of metamerism can appear among different
> papers. However, with some effort and careful paper selection really fine
> results can be produced.
>
> Your report is the first time I heard that one printer model may produce
> different metamerism than another. I'm just wondering if the paper and
> settings used may have been the difference, rather than the prnter model.
> What do you think?
>
>
> Regards,
> Clayton
>
> Info on black and white digital printing at
> http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm
> I-Trak 2.1 http://www.cjcom.net/itrak.htm
>
>  
>


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