MIS / UT2 anyone?

[ffttklackdedeng]

Tired of getting the least funny b&w color casts from the local labs (the last 'warm' prints were green) I moved on to the 'print it yourself' corner and got an Epson 1290s (the current european version of the 1280) and some MIS inks.

2 weeks passed, the inks arrived, bought some Hahnemühle Photo Rag. Downloaded Paul Roark's PS curves. Test prints to estimate the amount of USM necessary to cancel out the loss of sharpness caused by the print process (came up with 50% 3pixel for 300 dpi print). Test prints to estimate the optimal source dpi (came up with 288 or 300). Everything went well until there.

Now I tried the different curves profiles (cool, neutral, med-warm, carbon, sepia) to get an idea of the hues and the conclusion is (!) that only the cool profile has an even distribution of the hues, and neutral and med-warm are so-so. The carbon one shows almost no differences in the darker tones while the sepia one seems quite steep in the dark tones but lacks the bright ones.. So it seems like I will need to make my own curves even though using quite common components?

I would appreciate to hear about other experiences from b&w inkjet printers, maybe someone is even using the same config? Thanks!

 

[mrtoml]

I used this setup a while ago and got great results with the Roark curves and H. Photo rag.

Have you shaken the carts or ink bottles? One thing that happened to me was that the pigments settled in some of the carts and started to give strange results. You have to agitate them from time to time.

Another option might be to try quadtone rip (free to try) and see if you get the same problems.

 

[ffttklackdedeng]

Thank you for your answer, Mark! I removed the cartridges and gave them some shake. Unfortunately, this didn't improve and the next print came almost white 😱 and I needed 3 cleaning cycles to get the nozzles pattern back. Seems like my shaking inserted some bubbles to the system 🙂

But now I have the old situation. I think that the curves provided by Paul are more a starting point than the perfect fit, at least for a current system (maybe they changed the inks or the printer's driver but didn't update the curves?). So I'll be doing some fine tuning when I finally decide on which paper to settle down (I think I'll go for something at least semi glossy, can't fall in love with PR).

 

[mrtoml]

I guess you have to let those bubbles settle a bit! When I used this system it was with foam filled carts. I guess now you are getting the new foamless ones? The other point is that with the old system it took a while for the shaking to have an effect because the ink would take a while to run through the system (I was using a CIS). Eventually the 1290 printer died with an incurable nozzle blockage. I now use the epson K3 system and am happy with that.

With respect to glossy papers you will get bronzing (this can be alleviated by spraying the prints with a UV spray if it bothers you). Ilford smooth pearl is a good choice to practise with as it is fairly cheap.

Good luck!