WHAT UP WITH THE EPSON 4800

[Bill McCrystyn]

Thinking I had solved my 16 bit printer problem I read it only works in 16 bit mode with a Mac OS X. Bummed! Can this be true? I don't think I could swallow using MAC anything. Born and bred with an IBM. :(

[DickLudwig]

I use Qimage which handles printing 16 bit files without a problem - sending them directly to an Epson 4800

[Alfred Forns]

..... Bill the switch to Mac will do you good :) .

[Bill McCrystyn]

Ohhh, Al yuor hurt'in me. Look I can't even spell thinking about it. Did you ever get yours working? :D

[Bill McCrystyn]

Does anybody know if Epson will address the real world soon???

[john crookes]

It is not epson's fault that pc's do not support 16bit print engines

talk to the pc people as it is in their hands

[Bill McCrystyn]

Thanks John, I was half kidding. I figuered it probably was. I own a little R1800 now and have been very pleased with it. I will begin my quest for the holy grail starting with H/P and daddy Dell. Their lagging.

[Roger Clark]

Is there any printer capable of actually printing intensity levels needing 16-bit precision? And if so, could it be detected with the eye? After all a print is reflective and the eye has trouble distinguishing even a couple percent differences in intensity at least over much of its range.

A test: create a large gray square image with level = 128, then inside the square, put large text with level 129. Now print the image. Can you see the text? If you have a 16-bit printer on a mac, does that help?

Then note that photos are typically much more complex, which tends to hide details from our eyes.

Roger

[Bill McCrystyn]

So, while 8-16 bit differences can be seen and distinguished on our monitor and during post processing as evidenced, much sutlety will be none the less lost on the media used in the end product. What of all this talk of new K inks and so forth and so on. Is this more to do with the ink/paper combo and less to do with the driver device.

[Robert Amoruso]

Bill,

I am an engineer and a tech head but I try not to get too wrapped up in the 1's and 0's of all this. I use an Epson 4800 and the Imageprint RIP for it and make great looking prints on Moab paper from 16-bit TIFF files. The RIP is expensive however.

[Bill McCrystyn]

Thanks Robert. I am a graduate of Moosehead U. Please bear with me. What is an RIP? I am currently printing on Epson Premium Luster. What/where is Moab?

[Robert Amoruso]

Thanks Robert. I am a graduate of Moosehead U. Please bear with me. What is an RIP? I am currently printing on Epson Premium Luster. What/where is Moab?


Raster Image Processing Bill. ColorByte is the company that produces it. See them at http://www.colorbytesoftware.com/.

It is an expensive software and replaces the Epson driver. I still use version 6 - works well so why upgrade. ColorByte has ICC profiles you download that you can use with it. The reason I use this is it allows me to use a special ink formulation in the printer so I don't have to swap out Black - Matte and Black - GLossy when I go from matte to glossy papers.

Moab Paper Company - bought by Legion last year. See them at http://www.moabpaper.com/.
I use the Lasal, Kayenta and Entrada papers.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raster_image_processing

A raster image processor (RIP) is a component used in a printing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing) system which produces a raster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raster_graphics) image also known as a bitmap (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitmap). The bitmap is then sent to a printing device for output. The input may be a page description in a high-level page description language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_description_language) such as PostScript (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript), Portable Document Format (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format), XPS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_Paper_Specification) or another bitmap of higher or lower resolution than the output device. In the latter case, the RIP applies either smoothing or interpolation algorithms to the input bitmap to generate the output bitmap.

[Bill McCrystyn]

Thanks again Robert. I always seem to be learning here.