I recently acquired an Epson R300 and I've been experimenting with a variety of setups to try and find optimal settings for printing.
I'm printing on Epson Premium Lustre paper with genuine Epson dye-based inks, and printing from Photoshop on a PC running XP. For B&W printing I've found that I'm getting my best results by in PS converting the image to 'Gray Gamma 2.2' profile, setting 'Color Handling' to 'Let printer determine colors', and 'Rendering Intent' to 'Relative Colormetric' In the printer properties setting paper type to 'Premium Lustre', 'black ink only' and color controls to 'Gamma 2.2' I've had very limited experience with real darkrooms, but the results I get with this setup resemble quite closely the few 'real' 8x10" prints that I do have. The Epson black ink seems to have a slightly greenish tint under flourescent lighting, but its not unpleasant. My prints were coming out much darker than I expected until I assigned the 'Gray Gamma 2.2' profile to them. I had the default set to 'Dot Gray 10%'. I came a across a test print at www.northlight-images.co.uk which used a 'Gray Gamma 2.2' profile, and that printed very nicely, so I thought I'd try using the same profile. For color printing I'm using the Epson ICC profile for the R300 and Premium Lustre paper and the results seem quite natural and look great. For a cheap printer (I paid CAD$130 direct from Epson) the results more than meet my requirements. If anyone has suggestions on other setups, or papers, worth trying please let me know. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Fred Widall Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: http://www.ist.uwaterloo.ca/~fwwidall ----------------------------------------------------------------------
