Epson 3800 basic B/W question

[Phil Hudson]

When printing in monochrome on an Epson 3800 does it use all the ink colours to make up the dots of varying density?

Is it possible/desireable to print using only the black/light black/light light black, etc?

In other words does one need to buy all the ink cartridges even when printing mono?

I'm sure there's a bloomin' obvious answer staring me in the face but......!

Thanks in advance for any wisdom!

[Preston]

If the 3800 is anything like my R2400, the printer will not work if a cartridge is missing or empty.

As to whether the printer uses any color ink when printing printing a grey scale image, I'll defer to amore knowledgeable authority.

--P

[rdenney]

As far as I can tell, the 3800 uses all the colors in "Advanced Black and White" mode. It may not when printing monochrome files directly, but then you lose any ability to tone. You can also tone by adding a color fill adjustment layer, but doing so requires that you convert the file to RGB, so that will use all cartridges.

When you buy a 3800, it comes with a set of cartridges, and even if you tone using color fill layers or Advanced Black and White mode, you will empty the color cartridges VERY slowly. You only have to replace the cartridges as they become empty.

Rick "still looking for the toning effect that looks like selenium" Denney

[Lenny Eiger]

Cone's new inks for the 3800 are available... might take a look...

http://shopping.netsuite.com/s.nl/c.362672/sc.15/category.39493/.f

Lenny

[Nathan Potter]

Lenny, as I understand it the Cone inks are only available in bottles, not OEM cartridges. What sayst thou?

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[D. Bryant]

Lenny, as I understand it the Cone inks are only available in bottles, not OEM cartridges. What sayst thou?

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

That's correct. You have to purchase refillable ink carts, too.

Don Bryant

[Oren Grad]

When printing in monochrome on an Epson 3800 does it use all the ink colours to make up the dots of varying density?

Is it possible/desireable to print using only the black/light black/light light black, etc?

In other words does one need to buy all the ink cartridges even when printing mono?

I'm sure there's a bloomin' obvious answer staring me in the face but......!

Thanks in advance for any wisdom!

ABW certainly mixes other colors in. I don't know of any other "Epson-native" mode that would assure that you use only MK/LK/LLK, but I'm still at the beginning of my Epson learning curve, so I could well be missing something.

QuadToneRIP, an inexpensive RIP for Epson printers, does offer among its different monochrome "flavors" an option that uses only MK/LK/LLK. At least it has such an option for the 3880; I imagine it does for the 3800 as well.

It's desirable in the sense that it gives you carbon-only printing. Whether you'll like the way the prints look is a separate question. I wasn't very happy with my initial results printing that way with my recently-acquired 3880, but I haven't had the time yet to give it a proper test by setting up a profile for soft proofing and adjusting the channel curves to suit.