I don’t believe they just added another shade of gray in the Ultrachrome Pro inkset used in this printer, I don’t believe any of the 3 shades of gray exactly match either LK or LLK of the Ultrachrome HD inkset of the p6000/8000 printer.
It’s also a completely revamped head designed. I can’t see how they wouldn’t have to rework the ABW driver because of the inkset and head design.
Wayne,
What you say would seem to make sense, but I guess I'm a little suspect because as John has pointed out, Epson has not really marketed any kind of "significantly improved" ABW capability on these new P10k/P20K printers. If indeed Epson has full Quad K capability with ABW now, I for one would expect them to really make a big deal of this. But maybe they just don't want to waste their marketing message on it. If that is the case, then it is really unfortunate.
In any case, on behalf of all us interested in B&W printing, I decided to try to get an answer directly from Epson. I contacted Epson technical support with the following question:
"I would like to know if the P10K/P20K Advanced Black and White (ABW) driver has been modified to take full advantage of the new additional gray ink on this printer. ABW on my P9000 only uses three K inks: PK or MK, LK, and LLK. Does the ABW driver on this new printer use ALL FOUR of the gray inks when printing B&W (i.e. PK or MK, DG, G, LG)? Or does it still use only three shades of K? If so, which K inks are used in ABW?"
Here is what I got back from Epson:
"Thank you for contacting Epson regarding your Epson SureColor P20000. It is my pleasure to respond to your inquiry. Yes, the driver for both the P1000 and P2000 has been optimized to utilize the gray inks for those printers."
I followed up with an additional question to make sure this answer was referring to ABW, and got this answer from Epson:
"Thank you for contacting Epson, the printer driver provided on the Epson website does take advantage of all of the inks installed in the printer. The driver will use all of the inks when printing color or the advanced black white option. Please note there is only one driver, there is not a separate driver for color or a separate driver for black and white printing."
So based on Epson's response as above, it seems ABW does use the four K shades on the P10K/P20K (and other inks of course to neutralize the warm K inks). I have to admit that I'd still like to see more detail (e.g. whitepaper, technical review document, etc.) from Epson on ABW improvements on the P10K/P20K compared to earlier printers. I think there are enough of us interested in high-end B&W printing that it would make it worth their while.
In the end, I guess we will have to get a deeper understanding of the improved ABW based on user experience and reports. I know from reading the P10K manuals that the driver software interface is exactly the same as before, but what we really need to see is if/how ABW prints differently than before. I encourage all new owners of P10K/P20K printers here on the forum to let us know your experience with ABW, especially as it compares to ABW on previous Epson printers.
Dave