Canon Pro-1000 Tone Control in PSP plug-in

[GrahamBy]

I'm still getting to know my pro-1000, which I use from the Print Studio Pro-2 (PSP2) plug-in for LR. Last night I was rather mystified why I generated a B&W print in which the dark tones were so squeashed down to black, so I started looking around.
First thing is that the soft-proof available in PSP2 was also much darker than the image in LR itself... I should have paid attention, but with PSP-1 (with the pro-100) there was no important difference.

Anyway, if you go into the "modify" tab in the righthand pane of PSP2, you find a "tone" option, with choices soft, standard, medium hard, hard, and very hard (actually on mine: doux, standard, mi-dur, dur et très dur, but I'm guessing the translations). Surprisingly, it seems that "hard" is the default! Clicking through the options on an image with a lot of dark tones the difference is obvious, and for me "soft" was closest to what I saw on screen either in LR or after exporting as jpg.

I haven't yet check if this option is also present in colour...

[Mark D Segal]

Could you explain why you are using the PSP plugin to print from Lightroom? Lightroom's Develop module has pretty much all one normally needs to make stunning B&W conversions toned and tuned they way you want them, and the Print Module works splendidly and seamlessly in coordination with the Develop Module. and lots of layout flexibility.

[GrahamBy]

My experience with the pro-100 and PSP1 was that it was that PSP is a much easier interface, specifically in terms of selecting page layouts, than the Windows printer driver accessible directly from LR. It also happens to be Canon's recommended way of accessing the printer from LR, as you apparently discovered in writing the review of the pro-2000. In the case of the 1000, it also offers easy access to the CO coverage options, as well as the usual menu of profiles etc etc.

The Develop module is not in question, that is what I use to prepare the prints. I did not intend to use any of the further modifications offered in PSP2, but to simply use it as a printer driver.

In brief, why wouldn't I?

My point is that its default setting is NOT a transparent link from the Develop module to the printer. It was a warning to others who might follow the same path.

[Mark D Segal]

My experience with the pro-100 and PSP1 was that it was that PSP is a much easier interface, specifically in terms of selecting page layouts, than the Windows printer driver accessible directly from LR. It also happens to be Canon's recommended way of accessing the printer from LR, as you apparently discovered in writing the review of the pro-2000. In the case of the 1000, it also offers easy access to the CO coverage options, as well as the usual menu of profiles etc etc.

The Develop module is not in question, that is what I use to prepare the prints. I did not intend to use any of the further modifications offered in PSP2, but to simply use it as a printer driver.

In brief, why wouldn't I?

My point is that its default setting is NOT a transparent link from the Develop module to the printer. It was a warning to others who might follow the same path.

To be clear, the purpose i identified in the Canon Pro-2000 article for using PSP is to print profiling targets that are truly not colour managed, as required for this process.

I have also reviewed this app in my Pro-1000 article and found it to be generally a useful and convenient interface leading into what the printer driver does. However, because it was causing you the problem you mentioned in your opening post, I was simply suggesting you could possibly avoid that difficulty by just using Lightroom instead. I don't use Windows so I'm not familiar with the details of the driver set-up in that platform, but using LR with OSX I have no particular difficulty accessing the driver settings you mention, hence the basis of my suggestion. I would also add that it is usually recommended to do one's soft-proofing in the image editing phase of the workflow rather than at the printing phase, and this LR handles very well (if you have good profiles and use the same profile for both softproofing and printing), as you most likely know.

I understand your point about the mismatch of the default setting in PSP, so my mind turned to ways of satisfactorily avoiding the issue altogether.

[Panagiotis]

I find the image display unreliable when printing BW (Black and White Photo) from PSP. And of course you cannot softproof because there is no paper profile selected.
I find the LR display very close to the printed BW output when:
Standard tone is selected in PSP or
when all sliders are zeroed in the Manual Color Adjustment in the printer driver (when printing from LR with the printer BW mode).

[GrahamBy]

so my mind turned to ways of satisfactorily avoiding the issue altogether.

Fair enough. The simplest solution for me is to verify the tone setting is set appropriately.

[GrahamBy]

Small correction: the tone control is under the "correction" tab, not "modifier" (your best guess for the English version).

It is present only when printing in B&W mode (ie profiles disabled). The choice of tone is not signaled in the left pane summary of printing parameters.

[GrahamBy]

So this appears to have been modified by the v2.040 firmware. The "standard" tone now appears to be the best match to the image displayed in LR, whereas "soft" is noticeably softer... as you'd expect.
Looks like there was a screw-up in v2.020.

The failure to turn on problem also seems to have been fixed.