Epson ABW greyscale printing

[Jeffrey Sipress]

I've had incredibly great results printing B&W on the 4800 from the very first sheet, using the standard profiles and ABW. What Jack said is true, I'm sure. I don't know what advantage there is to spending money (up to $500 for some) on RIP's when the output looks just like it should now.

[Tom Jones]

I talked with Mark Radogna, who is the Group Product Manager for Professional Imaging at Epson America, at the LA Epson Print Academy recently. I asked about the differences between printing BW with RGB profiles and ABW mode. I have been getting better results with my 2400 using RGB, and wanted to know what I was missing.

Mark told me the only real difference is that the ABW mode uses substantially less yellow ink. Since yellow fades faster than other inks, the print permanence is better with ABW.

[Kerik Kouklis]

I've had a 3800 for a couple of weeks. I've been getting mixed results printing 'toned' BW prints in RGB mode, both with and without the ABW printing option. Some looked great and some had weird color transitions between shadow and midtone areas. After reading Tim's post, I tried ABW again last night except with grayscale images and the results are fantastic. Much better than what I had been getting and no hint of weird tonal transitions. Thanks for the tip! The 3800 is a great machine both for prints and digital negatives...

[Greg Lockrey]

QTR is now available for the 3800. It's worked like a charm for my 2200, for the first time I was actually able to make neutral (i.e. no color tint) black and white prints using UC inks, before that used MIS inks for b&w. While you can use QTR to make your own profiles (assuming you have the right equipment), it also contains it's own generic profiles that have worked well for me using Epson Heavyweight Matte and Entrada Natural Fine Art papers (never used a gloss or semi-gloss paper so I don't know how well the generic for Photo Black works). I plan to buy a 3800 when the dust settles but I'll be surprised (not for the first time) if ABW works better than QTR. For $50 QTR is hard to beat.

Brian,
Where are you finding the curves for the 3800? I just downloaded the latest 2.5.0.9 and it says in the curves window that "3800 curves are not available". When I toggled the Quad 4800, then I have a curve selection. Any thoughts as to what I'm not doing?

[Jack Flesher]

Jack, As far as I can understand it, that was the point of a lot of the testing he did with the ABW driver. He found it to be more linear for greyscale/rgb grey images than the canned profiles. It also gave a much deeper black (as well as used less of the problematic yellow - although it didn't eliminate it like the Quadtone RIP does for example)

I know that's what the claim is, but I get a maximum black and very linear grayscale with my profile (same in color or B&W). I can't speak to the yellow issue conclusively, but have not noticed any issues using my profiles (generally, the yellow has the most metal in it and is what exaggerates the "bronzing" in the prints -- and I do not see any of that in my prints.)

To be clear, I am talking only about Epson printers using the K3 inks. And FWIW, several other K3 users I know are in absolute agreement with me on this -- but we are all using custom profiles. (Uwe Steinmueller, the owner of the site with the article you linked to, is one of them...)

And don't get me wrong, if ABW is working you, fine. Personally, I can't stand that it doesn't let me preview the result with any accuracy onscreen...

Cheers,

[tim atherton]

I can't speak to the yellow issue conclusively, but have not noticed any issues using my profiles (generally, the yellow has the most metal in it and is what exaggerates the "bronzing" in the prints -- and I do not see any of that in my prints.),

it also tends to be the most fugutive of all the colours, which was also one reason some RIP's try not to use it for greyscale printing

[bdeacon]

From a Cone rep at last year's View Camera conference in Rockford I learned that Epson's ABW mode only prints at 720ppi. This may provide some justification for using the standard driver and a custom profile to achieve a higher resolution.

[tim atherton]

From a Cone rep at last year's View Camera conference in Rockford I learned that Epson's ABW mode only prints at 720ppi. This may provide some justification for using the standard driver and a custom profile to achieve a higher resolution.

simply incorrect (or misunderstood)

the native resolution of the printer is 720ppi but if you look at the dot and dither pattern it's quite easy to see that ABW also utlizes the same large/small and small/small droplets in 1440 and 2880 respectively as the regular RGB printing