Epson 4880

[WilliamBriggs]

I'd like to hear feedback on B&W print quality from the Epson 4880. Does it print neutral tones as advertised? Do you need to make special adjustments to your B&W files or use custom profiles to make really good B&W prints? Thank you for any information you are willing to share.

[DougMorgan]

Some random thoughts:

I find that the printer profiles really aren't the issue with the 4880 or 9880 and B&W printing but the advanced B&W settings, color->B&W conversion and source document profile are the key points.  

The only way to really get the best from the printer is a lot of trial and error since there is no way to get a preview on screen that is in any way useful.  

Do convert the file to B&W before printing since the printer driver conversion may not be the most pleasing result.   As a photoshop hint I usually use more than one conversion layer to get the most contrast out of a print.

Printing with an RGB profile yields a far different result than a gray scale profile but neither one is better than the other in all cases (at least in my experience) so you might want to try both if an image isn't grabbing you.  A 20% dot gain GS profile is often very dark.

I keep a small notebook as a log of all the B&W prints that go out with the file name & date, and settings from the B&W driver tab.   This is very helpful for both consistency and tweaks.  

For what it's worth I start at neutral darker 0 9 9 9 0 and go from there.

Happy printing....
Doug

[Murph]

I am also working with a new 4880 and it has a much steeper learning curve than my 2400.

[Alan Goldhammer]

I'd like to hear feedback on B&W print quality from the Epson 4880. Does it print neutral tones as advertised? Do you need to make special adjustments to your B&W files or use custom profiles to make really good B&W prints? Thank you for any information you are willing to share.

From the product information on the Epson site it appears that this has a sepcial ABW print driver in the same way that the 2880 and 3800 do.  Is this correct (and I would assume so)?  If so, this driver prints a much darker black than you can get than going through the normal driver.  There might be a mild linearity problem in the grey scale range as documented by Eric Chan on his notepage regarding the 3800.  I observed the same thing on the 2880 that I have.  You can address this through Photoshop but its far easier to get some ABW profiles from Eric for the papers that you use.  It make printing from either Lightroom or PS much easier and you do get better B&W prints this way.