Digital BW, The Print

I was directed to this group from a posting I did at 
largeformatphotography.info's forum.  Glad to have found you folks!

I have recently purchased the Epson 4800 printer for use primarily 
to print fine art B&W images. 
Given: All of my work is shot in 2 ¼ or 4x5 negative, then scanned 
at 8,000 lines on my Howtek 8000 line drum scanner. I then take the 
scanned file into CS2 and drop the res to a working res of 4,000 
lines for the 4x5 images and leave it at 8,000 lines for 2 ¼. The 8K 
file is then archived. 

After CS2 clean up and any burn/dodge is done to the working file, I 
then drop the 4K working resolution to 720 dpi from printing on the 
4800. My CS2 settings are with Red River profiles loaded, printer 
output is set to Black Point Compensation –On, Premium Photo Glossy 
paper, 2880 DPI, High Speed Off. The set up is for CS2 to manage the 
printer. 

I've been partial to glossy paper as it has a similar look to the 
Oriental Seagul that I used to use when printing with an enlarger, 
but I have been told that I should be working on matt papers if I 
expect to get into any gallaries, which is my goal! Paper I'm 
currently printing on is the Red River UltraPro Gloss. 

I have no problem dedicating my 4800 to strictly B&W work, if that 
will produce a better print.

My Mission: Exchanging of printing set up techniques with other 
users of the Epson 4800 doing B&W fine art work. 

I would like to hear what others with the Epson 4800 have found to 
be their optimum techniques used to generate the best looking print. 
To my knowledge, nobody is making a set of B&W inks for the 4800 
that would go beyond what the defaults inks are from Epson. 

Any suggestions on refining my printing technique would be 
appreciated. Thanks, Jack

If you have a 4800 use Epson Adv B&W.  As designed by Epson it is a
non-colour managed workflow (No Color Management in the CS2 print menu).
Make your greyscale workspace Gray Gamma 2.2.  Leave the Epson driver at
default settings for now then explore the tint picker.  There are a bunch of
papers worth trying (I'm not sure I believe the comment that it has to be
matte).  Explore your own preferences.  Epson Premium Semigloss or SemiMatte
are great "glossy" papers.  The new Crane Museo Silver Rag sounds like it's
worth exploring also.  For the matte papers there's a whole bunch.
Hahnemuhle Photorag 308 is a stalwart but listen in here for others.  I'd
explore and get to know your 4800 before changing ink setups.  You should
take a look at QTR Create ICC for profiling Epson Adv B&W setups (and other
B&W workflows) and closing the no colour management gap that I referred to
above.

> From: bradytao <stereoholic@...>
> Reply-To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 15:55:25 -0000
> To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [Digital BW] Epson K3- 4800 – How to get the best B&W print?
> 
> I was directed to this group from a posting I did at
> largeformatphotography.info's forum.  Glad to have found you folks!
> 
> I have recently purchased the Epson 4800 printer for use primarily
> to print fine art B&W images.
> Given: All of my work is shot in 2 1Ž4 or 4x5 negative, then scanned
> at 8,000 lines on my Howtek 8000 line drum scanner. I then take the
> scanned file into CS2 and drop the res to a working res of 4,000
> lines for the 4x5 images and leave it at 8,000 lines for 2 1Ž4. The 8K
> file is then archived.
> 
> After CS2 clean up and any burn/dodge is done to the working file, I
> then drop the 4K working resolution to 720 dpi from printing on the
> 4800. My CS2 settings are with Red River profiles loaded, printer
> output is set to Black Point Compensation ­On, Premium Photo Glossy
> paper, 2880 DPI, High Speed Off. The set up is for CS2 to manage the
> printer. 
> 
> I've been partial to glossy paper as it has a similar look to the
> Oriental Seagul that I used to use when printing with an enlarger,
> but I have been told that I should be working on matt papers if I
> expect to get into any gallaries, which is my goal! Paper I'm
> currently printing on is the Red River UltraPro Gloss.
> 
> I have no problem dedicating my 4800 to strictly B&W work, if that
> will produce a better print.
> 
> My Mission: Exchanging of printing set up techniques with other
> users of the Epson 4800 doing B&W fine art work.
> 
> I would like to hear what others with the Epson 4800 have found to
> be their optimum techniques used to generate the best looking print.
> To my knowledge, nobody is making a set of B&W inks for the 4800
> that would go beyond what the defaults inks are from Epson.
> 
> Any suggestions on refining my printing technique would be
> appreciated. Thanks, Jack