Digital BW, The Print

Hi, I'm Don from Miami and this is my first post in this group. I'm 
sorry that it is such a long one.

I have been asked by a good friend to help him get his Epson 4800 with
NK7 ink up and running. He has bought and installed Studio Print from 
Ergo Soft to use as his RIP. One thing of note is he that purchased 
the photo black set. 

He has a fellow who is in charge of the printer who has very limited 
digital experience, but is quite experienced in the B&W darkroom and 
is an accomplished, veteran photographer - who tried to get all this 
going before I became involved. As far as I know he did put the 
cartridges in correctly. But at this stage I can't be sure of 
anything.

They seem to be dissatisfied with the customer service from InkJet 
Art because they can't just call someone and get help. Seems they 
have to email them and then wait forever for a reply.

I have spent several hours with the printer and have tried to set up 
the RIP with dismal results. I feel the reason for this is because 
the patches that I need for calibration/linearization have lots of 
dark freckle like blotches in them. I have no idea what is causing 
this.
Even so I have managed to print a few images that are maybe a 4 on a 
scale of ten with some ugly flaws. It appears the printer is putting 
out too much ink, and on all the prints we end up with some small 
blobs/smears of dark black ink in places where they should not be.

I have a lot of experience with digital wide format color, and have a 
good handle on that, but this is a very different kettle of fish. 
My motivation for setting this right is to learn how to print with 
this technology, have access to the printer for my own images, and 
possibly help others with their B&W printing needs locally.

Any insights or direct advice would be greatly appreciated and I'm a 
fairly quick study.

Regards,

Don

Hey Don. You have a spectro, right? I will assume you do. You will  
need it.

If you want, you can start a thread at StudioPrint for the technical  
stuff. It's a beast to get running sometimes.

http://groups.google.com/group/Studioprint?lnk=li is the URL.

Otherwise here. Whichever.

please tell us your current tech specs (Dither Settings, Resolution,  
Linearization, Dot Density).

The main problem (for me) w/ starting a print environment w/ current  
versions of StudioPrint is the over-inking on Rag papers.

later, Walker