Standard (Halftone)
The halftone driver is a multichannel driver, that can be recognized in the printer driver list as the driver without the “(CT)” extension. This driver requires linearization of all the ink channels (for example: Cyan, Magenta, Black, Medium Black, Orange, Green, Light Black, Yellow, Light Magenta and Light Cyan). To profile this driver a 3rd party profiling application like Monaco platinum or ProfileMaker for Packaging is needed.
The halftone driver uses the RIP its screening/error-diffusion to do the half-toning.
Contone (CT)
The contone driver is a CMYK driver, that can be recognized in the printer driver list as the driver with= the “(CT)” extension. The advantage of this driver is that no linearization is needed and the separation to the non-CMYK inks is done by the printer. This way regular CMYK ICC profiles can be used to profile it. Thus using the internal color engine or using standard 3rd party CMYK profiling applications.
The contone driver uses the printer its native screening/error-diffusion to do the half-toning.
Conclusion
To get good results with colors and screening/error-diffusion similar to the Epson OS driver it is recommended to use the contone version.
The standard driver should be used only in rare cases like:
- The gamut needed is not achievable with the Epson
- Custom inks are used
- Control over the separation is needed
- Media used is not compatible with any of the build-in media types