Epson Stylus Pro 4880 user experience report
Part five: 8-bit vs. 16-bit printing
As you know, in an 8-bit image each colour channel (red, green and blue) contains 256 tonal values, which translates into 16.7 million possible colours per pixel. In a 16-bit image, on the other hand, each colour channel boasts 65,536 tonal values which results in 281 trillion possible colours per pixel. Therefore, printing in 16-bit mode should result in smoother gradations and improved transitions – at least in theory. Indeed, according to Epson the new 16-bit driver technology is one of the key features of the 4880.
One of the important features of Mac OS 10.5 (aka “Leopard”) that will matter to photographers is that “Leopard can use enhanced numerical precision to unlock the printing potential of pro-level color ink jet printers, using up to 16 bits per color channel.” (Source) To utilise this feature of Leopard Epson obviously should provide fully functional drivers for the OS, which, very strangely, at present is not the case. The current official Epson driver for the 4880, v3.90, was released on 25 October 2007 and, according to Epson, “This driver is OS X v10.5 compatible, not full-featured, and therefore, will offer only limited printing support”. It is unclear whether it supports 16-bit printing. I have printed a number of test photographs in 8-bit and 16-bit mode and no matter how hard I try I see no difference between them. This implies that either the driver does not support 16-bit printing or 16-bit printing offers only theoretical – as opposed to noticeable in real-life prints – improvement.
Although Epson promised to release full-featured Macintosh OS X 10.5 printer drivers for the Epson Stylus Pro printers in Q1 2008, as of late May 2008 they are still not available. Nonetheless, here Epson offer beta versions of the new drivers and describe them as follows:
“The following Epson drivers are for use with Apple Macintosh OS 10.5 - 10.5.x. These drivers are offered for public beta testing only, so Epson provides them "as is," without any warranty, support or liability of any kind. Final release of these drivers is expected to be Q1 of 2008.
These Epson Leopard drivers are all new. They are being designed to take advantage of the latest technologies introduced with the Leopard OS. One major feature is the 16-bit printing path. We are designing the drivers to function so that if you are printing 16-bit files from 16-bit capable printing applications, the data remains untouched in native 16-bit form as it arrives into the Epson printer driver for color and screening processing.”
The wording in the above paragraph leads me to think that the current driver (v3.90) does not support 16-bit printing.
I downloaded and installed the beta driver for the 4880 to, unfortunately, only discover that it is not functional. After sending a file to print, the status shown for the file in the printer utility is “stopped”. Clicking the “Resume” button does not change anything and if you click a few times more the system reports the following mistake:
“Operation could not be completed. Client-error-not-possible”.
In summary, the advantages of 16-bit printing at present are either an announced and sold yet not delivered feature or pure marketing hype. Which one it is will remain unknown until Epson get around to releasing a fully functional driver for the 4880.
Part two: Epson 3800 vs. Epson 4880
Part three: unexpected surprises
Part four: swapping matte and photo black inks
Part five: 8-bit vs. 16-bit printing