Black and White with an Epson 1400

[EthanFrank]

I have an Epson 1400 printer on its way to me right now. I've heard that it's not ideal for black and white printing, but the budget is rather small right now, so it was the best I could afford.

I hear that B/W prints exhibit a colour cast? How do I correct for this? Would this software I keep hearing about, "Quadtone RIP" help with that, or do I need the Eboni inks to go with that?

My apologies if I sound a little confused...this will be my first time inkjet printing, and I know nothing of profiling, etc.

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[Rhoyle]

I don't try to get perfectly neutral bw with my 1400. I think it's an exercise in futility. I'll tone them using different filters, color balance, or converting a bw image to RGB and adjusting each channel in levels. It's otherwise a great printer!

 

[Roscoe]

Try the RIP, I use it with a 1900 and get great results. It was a night and day difference after trying to adjust and tone my way through a set of inks and a stack of paper. And then there's profiling and paper choices... And you don't need the eboni inks, although I'd love to try them.

I eventually found a used r2400 for dedicated BW printing (with both the quadtone RIP and the ABW mode) and use the r1900 for color. I realize the 1400 and 1900 are different, but not by much. Prepare to dedicate a lot of time and ink to learning.

 

[EthanFrank]

Try the RIP, I use it with a 1900 and get great results. It was a night and day difference after trying to adjust and tone my way through a set of inks and a stack of paper. And then there's profiling and paper choices... And you don't need the eboni inks, although I'd love to try them.

So, I can use the RIP program with the stock Epson inks? That's good news!

 

[Leigh Youdale]

I can't remember where I saw it but somewhere there was reference to setting up the 1400 as a B&W-only printer. I recall it was praised as a dedicated printer for that purpose!
It might even have been in the Quadtone RIP website. I think it required a set of four different toned ink cartridges, though, not the standard Epson ones for that printer.
Try searching the internet a bit and also you may find that a PM to Chris Crawford produces some useful info. Although he uses a different printer he's done a lot of work on printing and got me started on Quadtone RIP on my R2880.

 

[ampguy]

I use this printer for bw and color using the same cartridges. for b/w, you need to use the epson drivers, and initially select plain paper, so you can select mono (not greyscale), then up contrast to +7/+9 and one other parameter is reduced. I'll have to check on that other parameter. The results are great on Epson prem matte and glossy, as well as Costco premium (Kirkland) papers.

 

[EthanFrank]

I'm having some trouble with the Quadtone RIP software:

Most images don't scale properly, and print way too cropped on my paper. It's as if I'm viewing them 1:1. Should I be exporting the files to the correct size to fix this? Or have I set up the Quadtone settings incorrectly?

Also, If I were to buy a set of black inks...would I be able to swap them out on a semi-regular basis with colour inks? Or would removing an ink cartridge with ink still left in it dry it out?

 

[EthanFrank]

Anyone? I could really use some help with this.

 

[KEH]

Hi there,

I used the 1400 with MIS Ultratone inks and Quadtone RIP for bit more than a year. Yes - you need to scale the photo to final size before printing.

There is quite a steep learning curve on all of this, and it is not straightforward to switch back and forth between colour and BW - a lot of cleaning of the heads would probably be required.

I was pretty happy with this setup, but the 1400 went the way of all cheap printers after a while, dumping large quantities of ink on prints. After having tried a few cheap 'solutions' I finally bought an Epson 3880 and have been deliriously happy - excellent BW with the default ink set, no clogs, generally bulletproof performance.

Eric Chan has some excellent profiles for Advanced BW printing with common papers, so that would be the easy way in if you want to avoid another learning curve.

My experience has been that there is a lot to learn in order to get good BW prints from inkjet - and no real shortcuts.

Bon courage!
Kirk