FineArt printing of b/w pictures with 16 bit?

Printer drivers like the Canon Photoshop plug-in, the QuadTone Rip, Ergosoft's Studio Rip, Image Print, the BowHaus True B&W Rip are as far as I know 16 bit throughout. Most 8-bit drivers have some 16-bit computing done where it counts but output is 8-bit. The 16-bit drivers will drop to 10 or 12 bit for output if I recall it correctly. If that is used to print B&W with Black Ink Only through one ink channel you will need a damned good printer to get all the information on the paper, not just detail but smooth gradations, homogene areas of one tone. If B&W is printed with CMYK ink mixes that becomes even more a problem.

With 3 or 4 channels in a printer dedicated for monochrome ink B&W printing the information throughput in total is already high for a B&W print, some custom B&W  inkset printers use even 6 or 7 channels for the same task. At some point it is more important to get consistency by for example the same ink squirted as 1.5 PL droplets through  more channels=nozzles than extending the diluted black=grey inks, the last is still needed if the droplet size is larger and the related print resolution lower. All in all with solutions like that there is no need for 16-bit hardware, the split to more ink channels does the job. Calibration, linearising and a perceptual curve or profile used per paper are probably the most important steps to get the best B&W prints, next to content.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/QuadtoneRIP/

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Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst
450+ paper white spectral plots:
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm