An aside about the RIPs for the X800 printers. I do love the Imageprint RIP, but my primary reason for getting it was the huge custom profile library that it gives you access to. IOW, if you plan on doing a lot color printing on just about any kind of paper, it will save you weeks of time and expense you might spend either having profiles made or making one yourself.
I previously had a very frustrating experience using the PrintFix 2 profiling hardware and software when I was using the 2200 for color printing. It literally took whole boxes of paper to get the profile built satisfactorily. The problem stemmed from the inconsistent readings that the PrintFix measurement tool was giving me. I found I had to read these 100+ square patches several times to zero in on a value. As you can imagine, the idea of doing this for more than one paper is just not something I want to spend time doing. So, on the recommendation of a fantastic color printer I know here locally, I swallowed hard and bought the Imageprint RIP. It offers a few advantages over the built in Epson driver:
1) you can tile images on your paper very efficiently and cut the amount of wasted paper you create
2) it is at least twice if not three times as fast as the Epson driver
3) it takes 16 bit files as input and (from what they tell me) uses the 16 bit values for printing - so in theory - smoooooth transitions
4) it uses its own dithering routine that to my eye is smoother than the Epson
5) the monochrome profiles that you can use are designed specifically for monochrome printing, and give you a wide range of tonality from cool to warm and the ability to create custom split and dual tones that look very much like some of split sepia/selenium toning I like to do in silver
I was able to create a very nice custom curve for the RIP for doing palladium negatives using an RGB file colorized as Kerik mentioned above in this thread (we've been talking)
That said, if the heartstopping price of the Imageprint solution gives you pause, then I heartily recommend the Quadtone RIP. It is not as slick and complete as the Imageprint RIP, but if you are willing to devote a little time, it can give excellent results. Thanks to some generous tips and help from Michael Mutmansky, I have been able to build some very nice palladium negatives using the Quadtone RIP.
The advantage this offers over the 'apply a curve' approach is that all of the curve building is done just once and embedded in your Quadtone RIP profile. So all you have to do to build a negative is just invert the file to a negative, flip it left-right, and print. Quick, easy, and no one gets hurt. By using QTR, you are able to skip some of the more perverse behavior of the Epson driver, which is designed for visual smoothness, not UV transmission density smoothness.
This, in my opinion, is the Achilles heel of the PDN approach when using the X800 printers. The PDN system is tied to the Epson driver, and it does things when laying down color that give strange UV density reversals at the high end of the color percentages. In fact, it makes it impossible to use the PDN system by the book. I managed to generate a PDN curve eventually by deviating from the by-the-book approach, but found the Quadtone RIP negatives and the Imageprint RIP negatives to be smoother and less grainy. So I punted on that approach, and am sticking to QTR for my negatives. My two cents.
Thanks Kerik, that helps.
is giving me very nearly perfect linear response and I'm getting a UV density range of a little over 2.0. It prints pure palladium beautifully without any added contrast agent. Again, I'm printing B&W RBG negatives. The only colorizing I'm doing is adding a screen layer of G004 based on a recommendation from Clay. This bumps the UV density just a bit but doesn't cause any grittiness in the image. The tonal smoothness I'm getting is equivalent to in-camera negatives.
