Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Colour Management => Topic started by: tongelsing on January 04, 2009, 09:48:38 am

Title: B&W managent
Post by: tongelsing on January 04, 2009, 09:48:38 am

Since a few weeks I own an Epson 7880 and I’m very pleased with the results. The colours on the monitor, Lacie321, match almost for 100% the output of the 7880.
But now I’m trying to make B&W-prints and that is an other story. If I make all the settings the same if it were a RGB-file the results are fine and almost spot on.
But when I choose in the Epsonprinterdriver for “black advanced” instead of “colour” the results are far to light even when setting the “tint” to “darkest” in the advanced B&W window.
I can offcourse use the luminance and contrastsliders in this window to get the most pleasing result but it seems to me that it is not the right way to do this.

Is this normal or do I something wrong. Are there special profiles for the Advanced B&W setting?

Using a MacbookPro, Lacie321 and CS3. Paper Epson premium semigloss.

Ton

Title: B&W managent
Post by: Mark D Segal on January 04, 2009, 10:06:26 am

Eric Chan has done probably the best detailed work available on the web using the Epson ABW driver for print making, and I suggest you visit his website (http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/Epson3800/index.html) for further information. I'm not sure whether he has worked on the 7880, but he has done much on the 3800. including the creation of profiles for ABW. Perhaps you could test their possible usefulness on the 7880 eventhough it is not the same printer.

Have you tried doing your B&W prints in RGB mode by using the B&W adjustment layer in PSCS3, or better still the grayscale conversion software in ACR 4.6 or LR 2.x?

Title: B&W managent
Post by: tongelsing on January 04, 2009, 10:28:28 am

Quote from: MarkDS

Eric Chan has done probably the best detailed work available on the web using the Epson ABW driver for print making, and I suggest you visit his website (http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/Epson3800/index.html) for further information. I'm not sure whether he has worked on the 7880, but he has done much on the 3800. including the creation of profiles for ABW. Perhaps you could test their possible usefulness on the 7880 eventhough it is not the same printer.

Have you tried doing your B&W prints in RGB mode by using the B&W adjustment layer in PSCS3, or better still the grayscale conversion software in ACR 4.6 or LR 2.x?

Thanks for your suggestion. I will visit his site.
The files I used for B&W printing are existing B&Wfiles. In fact they are the testimages I found on northlight-images.co.uk

Ton

Title: B&W managent
Post by: keithcooper on January 07, 2009, 04:31:53 pm

Quote from: tongelsing

Thanks for your suggestion. I will visit his site.
The files I used for B&W printing are existing B&Wfiles. In fact they are the testimages I found on northlight-images.co.uk

Ton

I've got a 7880 here and the ABW mode works a treat.  If you look on the page you got the test images from, you should see links to the reviews, which include the 3800 and 4880 - both have references to B/W printing with ABW. I think there is also more ABW stuff in some of the paper reviews too

Keith Cooper - Northlight Images