Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Black & White => Topic started by: Jeff-Grant on January 29, 2017, 02:01:06 am
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My B&W printing is either K6 piezography, or K3 QTR. Occasionally, I want to get a palladium look in a print which is not available with QTR. It's easy enough to get the look in PS but it means that my image stays in RGB and I use the standard Epson driver if I wish to print. This leads me to wonder how good the Epson driver is with toned B&W. Does anyone have an opinion either way?
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Hi Jeff,
I'm no expert on this subject, but for me the Epson driver is much less useful then PS. Toned prints done with the Epson driver don't seem to produce the palladium look nearly as well- or as easily- as in PS. I'm a big fan of J. Schewe and use a custom profile and have PS manage the print. But I'm no expert so my experience is limited.
Also I like to use a slightly different tone for the highlites then the darks.
Richard
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Hi Richard,
Thanks and apologies for not being clearer. When I said 'Epson driver' I meant something other than QTR, and not ABW. I use Mirage for colour printing, and haven't been near the Epson driver for years. I didn't know that it could do anything with tones. I would do my toning in PS and then print with Mirage.
My question is how well does a colour driver do against a dedicated B&W one. I'm assuming that it must be pretty good as Imageprint is supposed to be very good on B&W.
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Isn't it really a question of how good the profile is for the paper you're using. If you have the OEM inkset and a perfect profile, the print should be exactly as shown on the monitor and measured with the eyedropper. My experience, however, is that the standard profiles and the ones I can reasonably make are less than perfect.
I'm curious what the Lab (a,b) number are for the target look you're after.
Paul
www.PaulRoark.com
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That's what I'm trying to get to Paul. I can make a good profile. I suppose I should just do it and see. I'm just trying to find out any gotchas before I start
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My B&W printing is either K6 piezography, or K3 QTR. Occasionally, I want to get a palladium look in a print which is not available with QTR.
Why not just make a palladium print?
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... I can make a good profile. ... I'm just trying to find out any gotchas before I start
The metamerism/color constancy issue might crop up. I used color Noritsu (Claria) dyes to make B&W for a while. I found that I needed 1/3 of the density to come from the black ink in order to hold down these color artifacts to a reasonable level. I'm not sure how much of the LK and LLK the Epson driver will use in color mode. An increased gray substitution ratio is part of what, apparently, ABW does. You'll find out when you make a few and look at them under different lights.
You'll also find out how good those profiles really are.
Good luck.
Paul
www.PaulRoark.com
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Thanks Paul. Will do.