On Dec 23, 2005, at 8:45 PM, David Mann wrote:
I'd like to use matte papers but the procedure for using the matte
black ink with the 2100 Mac driver is a PITA and I'm not doing
enough printing to justify the resultant ink wastage.
I don't know what you mean. What's the procedure?
Since I've standardized on matte surface, I don't change inks: I
replace tanks as I empty them. I made that decision when I bought the
R2400 ... All matte surface printing, period. I'd much rather have a
consistent process with predictable results than be second guessing
papers and profiles all the time. My goal in buying this printer was
to produce work. ;-)
Regards the profiles, Epson has optional profile packages on the
website that should be installable into your system. They seem to
cover all their papers, but I haven't looked too specifically into
the R2200 sets as I use the R2400.
I'm not talking about the profiles... I've already downloaded
Epson's "high quality" profiles, and I let Photoshop do the colour
management. There is a setting in the printer driver where I have
to select the correct paper type - eg plain paper, premium
semigloss etc. It sets up limits in some of the other controls, eg
max available dpi, and it may also affect other things (ink density?).
I've experimented with this setting testing all combinations with the
Epson Heavyweight Matte and Enhanced Matte papers (Velvet Fine Art is
too expensive to waste). While I can see a slight difference between
the rendering on the two papers (Enhanced Matte seems to deliver
*slightly* greater tonal differentiation in the Zone II-IV range than
Heavyweight Matte), the paper choice in the R2400 driver does not
affect the rendering at all as far as I can see. Perhaps if I used
the driver features for tonal tweaking on B&W there would be a
difference, but I let Photoshop read the profile and set up all the
color management, turn off color management entirely in the driver.
If you want it, though, why not just download the driver package for
your printer from the Epson USA website? Install it, test it ... if
it doesn't work, back it out and reinstall the drivers you already have.
Godfrey
