I am learning a great deal from you! I've read Jeff Schewe's book on The Digital Print. He really likes QTR as a 3rd party RIP as it is economical and he likes how it performs. But then again, he's working on a Mac. When I first started down this rabbit hole I had no idea what I was getting into. I do like SOME of the technical aspects of this, but the bottom line is getting a good looking B&W print. Epson's ABW tool isn't bad at all. I have just read that QTR can be a lot better. When you used it, did you use a single curve, or did you combine curves? Some of what I've read indicates that for piezo print heads and K3 inks you must only use a single curve. That kind of defeats the entire purpose of QTR, doesn't it?
When I played with it, I set up the maximum black percentage first as I wanted a blacker black than what I was seeing. Later on I used a ColorMunki Photo to read the steps off the 21 step target that comes as part of some download off the QTR site. Then I plugged in those numbers into QTR's Curve Creator array and generated a curve that set up the linearization too for that paper and ink setting off the Epson printer.
I let my B&W photos stay in Adobe RGB though and didn't save them as a 2.2 Gray image in PS. Mainly because I wanted to add a tone (red or a selenium bluish) later so I had to leave Adobe RGB in the image else the printer turned off the color inks in ABW mode.
My QTR difficulties, aside from the very old Windows GUI, "Error 32" codes which seem to date back years now in their users group, hanging up in Curve generation, and sundry instances of the program remaining in the background when closed or crashed (Task Manager to the rescue!) was in getting shadow detail in the blacks. Once the black density is optimized for a nice rich black, the shadow detail blocked up badly. Even the 21 step tablet bunched up in the black end. So linearization is needed to fix that (different black inks like LK LLK called into the curve) and the ColorMinki Photo generated some numbers to set up a straight line (All those "L" things in that curve tool and text chart it makes that should appear as a straight line.). I have an i1 PhotoPro 2 as well, but as long as I had some spectrometer numbers it helped there in the curve generation end one needs to fill in that curve generator chart.
My biggest issue was my prints were not that sharp using it. Didn't notice it until I put a print out of Qimage next to the QTR one and it was apparent the QTR wasn't that sharp. My thinking is that the extra back ink to hit a better dMax black was also bleeding a bit into the printing paper itself to make it appear soft and not as sharp as out of Qimage which seems to have a much better print sharpening engine in it. So QTR is sort of retired for me now until I find something else to play with.
I also had some issues of getting a neutral black from the lightest to the darkest steps in that 21 step chart. So I had to apply a bit of magenta and cyan in some of the blacks as they are not truly neutral in color, plus the paper may color it too. So some colors had to stay on, plus leave it out of the ABW so that the print might need color hence it remained in Adobe 1998 for any coloration correction needed. I believe Epson ABW has a bit of color (Sepia, etc.) that it can apply within the driver so it may be that Adobe 1998 might not be a big issue if one sets it up right.
Easiest is to use their supplied charts, and modify those as needed if you can with a spectrometer. Sometimes creating a brand new chart from scratch crashed it for me in Windows 8-64. The Mac guys seem to be having issues with the new OS 10.9 with Colorsync in sundry programs, and QTR seems better addressed for that system overall. No cakewalk now no matter the OS system.
SB