Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: IWC Doppel on December 31, 2012, 10:39:44 am
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I have settled on three papers for B&W and currently looking at prints of B&W test patterns. I am finding my low IRE blacks are crushed and I am losing shadow detail, any suggestions as to the best way round this. I want to be methodical and match as best as possible my screen view (which crushes blacks a little) I can see subtle shades and detail above 5% and shadow detail at 10% on screen, but printing is all crushed below 15%
Any advice appreciated
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Are you softproofing with BPC on and Simulate Paper White on? The softproof should give you quite a reliable on-screen perception of the shadow detail to expect from the paper.
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I have just set the soft proofing to perceptual and it is closer but still some loss in the shadow detail. I had by experiment settled on LR print adjustment of 26 Brightness and 34 Contrast and this is actually closer (less crushed blacks and more 'clarity' in the detail), plus it looks better.
Perhaps I should continue testing with LR4 print adjustments ?
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In the LR Develop Module, with Softproof active, do you check the box that says "Simulate Paper and Ink"? If you do this, and you adjust your print accordingly in the Develop Moddule, and your monitor is dimmed-down sufficiently to mimic the effect of reflected light off paper from your printer (depending on ambient light your monitor brightness could typically be appropriately set within the range of say 90~ 120 cd) you should not need to implement brightness and contrast adjustments in the print module. Have a read of Andrew Rodney's article on this website "Why Are My Prints Too Dark". While your issue and the main issue of that article are somewhat different, you will still find useful advice in it.
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What papers are you printing on and what printer? Which test image are you using? With a 21 step B/W wedge pattern you certainly should be able to do much better than you report.
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The papers I have settled on are HFA Museum Etching and at a lower price point Fotospeed EG natural Textured 315g. both textured matt papers which I prefer. I have calibrated my screen using a Color Munki display with the screen set at D65 and 100 Cd. I have dim internal lighting. My printer is a 3880
I have just printed a 21 step wedge with fotospeed paper using ABW and no LR print adjustments for brightness or Contrast and tried using 'dark' and 'normal' within the print settings for advanced color tone settings. With Dark beyond 15% is all black, with normal I can make out a little difference between 10 and 15%, but very small. On screen in softproofing I can just see 0% being darker than 5% but they are very close, 10% is clearly lighter.
At the top end the 95% and 100% look very good, by eye the 'dark' looks a little better
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PS Does color density in paper configuration have any effect in ABW mode ?
(I have not looked at this yet, but if I can add a little more ink at the top end for improved black I would be interested)
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I'm confused a little now. You say you are using soft proofing and then are printing in ABW mode. The only way you can do this is if you have ABW profiles for the two papers in question and are printing on Win7 OS as Apple no longer allows you to do this. I have not printed on either of the papers you mention but have used Hahneuhle William Turner extensively and can assure you that on that paper all 21 steps of a BW patch set can be distinguished. I know this as I've printed them and prepared ABW profiles using the QTR program. I've also printed a 51 step patch set which is a little bit of overkill and can make out the steps there as well. I use the 'dark' setting but leave all of the other settings in the print driver alone. I also print on a 3880.
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Sorry, yes to be fair I am selecting the icc of velvet fine art paper as the softproofing profile. I am using velvet fine art media type, so you are right its not apples and apples. However I do seem to have a problem with the blacks which show up on screen with and without softproofing.
The paper I have just printed on (1 1/2 hours ago) is Fotospeed natural Textured 315g. Perhaps I should try adjusting the shadow tonality setting ?
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Your monitor brightness setting should be quite OK for a dimly lit environment. However, especially when it comes to the deeper blacks, an "apples to apples" softproofing could be quite important. As well, you will not get the best possible tonal separation at the bottom of the tonal scale from matte papers. For the most part, their maximum black is just not as black as you would achieve from a quality gloss paper. In the days when I used matte papers, I often worked with blend modes and what not in Photoshop to separate the lower end of the tonal scale in order to improve tonal differentiation within the tonal range of the paper. Once the baryta gloss papers became available I abandoned matte and have had much more success with blacks and deep shadow tones in general.
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The difficulty is using a profile and extrapolating it to what comes out of the ABW print path is that you have a higher Dmax from the ABW driver (it can be 10-15% deeper black than with the normal driver according to my tests). Mark is correct that using a matte paper the BW scale is compressed considerable relative to gloss papers. Off the top of my head, the Dmax for most matte papers is about 1.6 and those for good gloss papers (Ilford Gold Fiber Silk & Museo Silver Rag) are about 2.3 or so. It requires greater care in printing on the matte papers to fully bring out the shadow details. You still should get decent results at the dark end of the range without the shadow detail getting crushed. I've successfully printed on matte papers in this regard (preferring mainly Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Ultrasmooth).
Mark is correct in terms of your monitor setting for a dim room. You could try moving it up to 110 or 115 to see if that improves the shadow details. The other thing to do is to view your print under a good Solux light source. Most room lighting is quite dim and you may thing you have crushed shadows but when you look at it again with good illumination it might be fine. I've certainly experienced this myself.
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Alan, they main thing about moving the monitor brightness upward is to avoid making it bright enough that what one sees on the monitor cannot be reproduced on paper. That is a key source of such problems. Andrew's article is good on this.
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Thanks for the help guys.
I have done a little more experimenting and can recover the 10% shadow detail with a somewhat aggressive increase in shadow tonality in the ABW driver advanced colour settings, the problem then is it seems to have a slight blue 'hue' and shows some banding. Looking at the screen and tones as well as a printed image i simply prefer everything using 'dark' rather than 'normal' . I might look at adding say 5 or 10 within shadow in lightroom to an image within soft proofing before printing and use the dark setting. I also get more but still not enough shadow detail with HFA Museum etching, but due to cost prefer to be experimenting with fotospeed paper.
I am happy with the level of black on matt paper, it's just lifting the 10/15% a touch
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I think you are better off doing the shadow manipulations within LR rather than the Epson driver. You can at least see on screen what the changes are doing to your image and then come up with a standard setting. The print driver is likely to be a lot of trial and error and I'm unsure about what other changes will occur to the image as you will have to do visual checks each time you make a change.
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Tks
I will see if perhaps another choice of icc paper profile matches better as I cannot use velvet fine art ABW as noted.
The velvet fine art colour icc I assume is showing a different 5,10,15 profile. It would be nice to get close to seeing the print on screen. Perhaps looking at contrast and brightness within the LR print module might prove useful.
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The difficulty is using a profile and extrapolating it to what comes out of the ABW print path is that you have a higher Dmax from the ABW driver (it can be 10-15% deeper black than with the normal driver according to my tests). Mark is correct that using a matte paper the BW scale is compressed considerable relative to gloss papers. Off the top of my head, the Dmax for most matte papers is about 1.6 and those for good gloss papers (Ilford Gold Fiber Silk & Museo Silver Rag) are about 2.3 or so. It requires greater care in printing on the matte papers to fully bring out the shadow details. You still should get decent results at the dark end of the range without the shadow detail getting crushed. I've successfully printed on matte papers in this regard (preferring mainly Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Ultrasmooth).
Mark is correct in terms of your monitor setting for a dim room. You could try moving it up to 110 or 115 to see if that improves the shadow details. The other thing to do is to view your print under a good Solux light source. Most room lighting is quite dim and you may thing you have crushed shadows but when you look at it again with good illumination it might be fine. I've certainly experienced this myself.
I find the biggest issue with viewing a print under ideal lighting using a bright solux viewing station is that the majority of prints are not displayed under these same ideal lighting conditions. Most are displayed under much darker conditions so I find it is better to not optimize for solux lighting unless you know for sure these will be the conditions under which the print will be displayed. I typically use a dimmer environment when judging my final print.
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Tks
I will see if perhaps another choice of icc paper profile matches better as I cannot use velvet fine art ABW as noted.
The velvet fine art colour icc I assume is showing a different 5,10,15 profile. It would be nice to get close to seeing the print on screen. Perhaps looking at contrast and brightness within the LR print module might prove useful.
No. The view in the Print module is not softproofed. The closest match you will get between screen and print is the Softproof and that you will see in the Develop Module with Softproof activated and the Simulate Paper and Ink box checked to be active.
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The problem with Softproofing is that it really does not address the issues you have with the ABW driver which lays the ink down differently than the traditional print driver. You will need ABW icc profiles, but again the problem here is that you can only use them under a Win7 OS. If you are on such a system send me a PM to discuss how they can be prepared. You can use these for softproofing.
I think a better way to go is to use a standardized B/W test print, print it with no corrections and see what you get. Then you can go in and make some subtle changes so that you can find some type of LR preset that will give you desired result. I have found Keith Cooper's test image (http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/black_and_white_test.html) invaluable for figure out what types of print settings work best. It has some very demanding images on it.
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The problem with Softproofing is that it really does not address the issues you have with the ABW driver .............
Correct, that's a problem with using the ABW driver, and yes, it can be mitigated in the way you suggest. However, as a practical matter, when I ran tests for B&W using the ABW driver versus the normal driver, I frankly didn't see ON PAPER, any major advantage to the ABW driver that justified the trouble of using it - but here I caution I tested this on an Epson 4900, not a 3800/3880.
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Mark, you do get a better Dmax and the ABW driver does use less colored ink which could be an issue in terms of print permanency. However, it's not a pure linear B/W response which is why one needs to make some slight corrections in the mid-range density patches where the deviation is noted. This is the problem that Eric Chan's profiles or a QTR profile address. If one is going to use the normal Epson print driver for B/W work where you can softproof regardless of the OS you are running it is important to construct profiles that have a B/W step wedge in them to even out the response. In the profiles I do for myself and others I have a 51 step B/W patch set included for just this purpose. I can see the difference in the B/W steps on the Jack Flesher test print (http://outbackprint.outbackphoto.com/printinginsights/pi049/essay.html)when I include these patches in the profile target.
Alan
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You will need ABW icc profiles, but again the problem here is that you can only use them under a Win7 OS.
It should work under any Windows OS, actually. Not sure what the deal is with MacOS, can't Photoshop use monochrome ICC profiles for soft-proofing on the Mac?
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Okay a few more tests....
I have been using softproofing in the develop module with a stock Velvet fine art profile. Accepting that this does not match the ABW mode. I have no issue with seeing 10% and a little of the 5% on screen with or without soft proofing and I am still finding it difficult to acheive that with adjustments on paper. I now have 12 A4 test prints :-[
I can see the principle but I am finding it difficult to get any 5% and 10% visible and this is with unpleasant aggressive adjustments
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PS I am a MAC user on snow leopard at present
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Mark, you do get a better Dmax and the ABW driver does use less colored ink which could be an issue in terms of print permanency. .............
Alan
Alan, nothing I've seen in the past conclusively demonstrates deeper maximum black on several baryta papers than the regular Epson driver with a good custom profile can deliver. Nor have I seen conclusive evidence from print permanence data for B&W prints that they will be less prone to deterioration if printed with the ABW option rather than the normal driver. Nor have I noticed in prints any problem with smoothness of grayscale tonal gradation in numerous test images I use, or better still in real photograph where it matters most. Whether these responses are exactly "linear" or not is quite unimportant to me if I can't see any quality hit from just using the most straightforward workflow for making the prints.
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It should work under any Windows OS, actually. Not sure what the deal is with MacOS, can't Photoshop use monochrome ICC profiles for soft-proofing on the Mac?
There was a long thread on this last year when the Epson driver was changed to deal with the Mac OS and one cannot send a profiled image through the driver in that OS any longer. You are correct that for now any Win OS up to 7 can use monochrome profiles. Don't know about Win8
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Alan, nothing I've seen in the past conclusively demonstrates deeper maximum black on several baryta papers than the regular Epson driver with a good custom profile can deliver. Nor have I seen conclusive evidence from print permanence data for B&W prints that they will be less prone to deterioration if printed with the ABW option rather than the normal driver. Nor have I noticed in prints any problem with smoothness of grayscale tonal gradation in numerous test images I use, or better still in real photograph where it matters most. Whether these responses are exactly "linear" or not is quite unimportant to me if I can't see any quality hit from just using the most straightforward workflow for making the prints.
Certainly the Dmax is higher with ABW than with the regular Epson driver. I measured this with all the papers I regularly print on (i1 pro measuring a maximum black patch). I know that you have printed on IGFS. With the normal driver I get a Dmax of 2.25 and this bumps up to 2.48 with ABW. It's measurable but whether it makes a significant difference is up to the viewer's eyes. Eric Chan (http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/Epson3800/faq.html#color_vs_abw) covers this issue as well.
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There was a long thread on this last year when the Epson driver was changed to deal with the Mac OS and one cannot send a profiled image through the driver in that OS any longer. .........
Alan - I'm confused about what you mean here. I'm on Mac OS 10.6.8 and every image I send through LR to print has an embedded profile, and it all works just fine.
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Certainly the Dmax is higher with ABW than with the regular Epson driver. I measured this with all the papers I regularly print on (i1 pro measuring a maximum black patch). I know that you have printed on IGFS. With the normal driver I get a Dmax of 2.25 and this bumps up to 2.48 with ABW. It's measurable but whether it makes a significant difference is up to the viewer's eyes. Eric Chan (http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/Epson3800/faq.html#color_vs_abw) covers this issue as well.
Yes, I read all of Eric's excellent contributions on this subject quite some time ago. All I can tell you is that when I LOOKED at the same prints made by ABW and the regular driver for my 4900 review, it was very hard to tell any difference, and I had a tonal range that went from zero shadow detail upward. So by measurements I don't doubt what you report - but, whether it makes a substantial photographic difference is another story.
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Okay a few more tests....
I have been using softproofing in the develop module with a stock Velvet fine art profile. ............
I can see the principle but I am finding it difficult to get any 5% and 10% visible .........
This outcome for that paper is completely un-surprising.
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I have read all of Eric Chan's excellent notes and there are a few areas where the updates have not filtered through, so to speak. I know with MAC and LR4 I can't experiment with his ABW profiles, the best balance I have so far is to adjust contrast and brightness in the LR printer module and add 5% shadow tonality. I am keen to get the majority of the image looking right as I endeavour to recover shadow detail, if I also add a little 5-10 in the develop module, that's as far as I can go before it looks wrong.
It's relatively cheap paper, but it does have nice deep blacks. Fortunately HFA museum etching is better regarding shadow detail.
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Alan - I'm confused about what you mean here. I'm on Mac OS 10.6.8 and every image I send through LR to print has an embedded profile, and it all works just fine.
You cannot use ABW profiles on a Mac OS machine. The ABW driver will not accept them.
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Ah OK - you didn't limit the statement to *ABW* profiles so I thought you were making another point. That's clear now.
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I have spoken to Fotospeed and they are going to provide a bespoke icc for free :)
It will be interesting to see how a colour icc used for B&W compares to ABW. I'll keep you all posted