Advanced B&W with Epson p800 and non-Epson papers

[bjanes]

With my Epson 3880 I can use the Advanced B&W (ABW) pipeline to print monochrome images with Epson papers. This gives better results than using the regular RGB pipeline with Photoshop manages colors and selecting the paper profile while disabling printer manages colors. To do this one uses Printer Manages Colors and selects ABW from the Color drop-down menu. Profile selection is grayed out and I presume the ABW profile is built into the printer driver. For printing to non-Epson papers Eric Chan has created special ABW profiles for the 3880 that are accessed via the Photoshop manages colors. The regular profiles provided by the paper vendor are not suitable for ABW printing as Eric explains here and quoted below.

"When we print color images through the RGB driver, the printing application usually converts images from the RGB working space to the output device's RGB space using paper-specific ICC color profiles. For example, when printing in Photoshop, it's common to set the Color Handling option in the Print With Preview box to Let Photoshop Determine Colors and to select the appropriate profile from the Printer Profile menu. (Then we have to remember to disable color management in the Epson driver to avoid double profiling.)

In contrast, when we print black and white images through the ABW driver, we don't use the standard ICC color profiles because those profiles are based on the RGB driver, not the ABW driver. In fact, Epson recommends setting the Color Handling option in Photoshop's Print With Preview box to No Color Management. This means that your images' RGB values are passed directly to the ABW driver unmodified. For example, if you place Photoshop's eye dropper over a pixel and find that it has RGB values (37, 37, 37), then (37, 37, 37) is exactly what Photoshop will give to the ABW driver."

Does anyone know how one can print to non-Epson papers (e.g. Red River) with the new Epson P800?

Thanks,

Bill

[Alan Goldhammer]

Bill,

I assume Epson have not markedly changes the ABW driver.  The issue of issuing special profiles for this has been discussed at length on the past.  When Apple did a major system update for our so years ago the ability to use ABW profiles was eliminated.  It was then that Eric Chan ceased making them.  Widows still permits this approach.  Roy Harrington's QTR program can be used.

Otherwise one needs to experiment to see what settings work 9best for 3rd party papers.

[Mark D Segal]

Bill,

Have a look at my review article on the Epson SC-P5000, this website, the section on Black and White printing and ABW, which I assume would be applicable to all these new models at least regarding the core technology and processes.

[bjanes]

Bill,

Have a look at my review article on the Epson SC-P5000, this website, the section on Black and White printing and ABW, which I assume would be applicable to all these new models at least regarding the core technology and processes.

Mark,

I did look at the Black and White printing section of your excellent review. I was under the misapprehension that ABW used a special profile under the hood, but as I understand your presentation ABW does not use a profile under the hood but sets the black and white points and then uses one of five possible tone curves. Apparently when one selects the paper in the print setup dialog, the necessary information is made available to the driver. This is in contrast to Eric's ABW profiles. With his ABW profiles one uses Photoshop manages the colors with his special ABW profile and then selects Advanced Black and White in the Color drop down menu of the Print Settings dialog and one of the five possible tone curves with the Advanced tab of Color Controls.

If one does not have the ABW profile, it is possible to select a normal ICC profile for that paper and then select Advanced B&W in the Color drop down menu, but Eric implies that this won't work properly. Do you know what would happen in this case?

From your review, I gather that ABW often offers little advantage over using normal ICC profiles and Photoshop manages colors.

Thanks,

Bill

[Mark D Segal]

Hi Bill,

I remember back in the days of the Epson 3800 and Eric's excellent Epson printer blog where he described and offered his profiling approach to using the ABW mode. If I remember correctly, what his profiling did most importantly was to allow a form of soft-proofing so one could predict the effect of the ABW settings on the final print appearance. Perhaps since then certain things have changed that could affect whether the approach Eric developed back then could be workable now; I don't know. We need to bear in mind that eleven years have elapsed between the launch of the 3800 and now, so much could have changed that may or may not be determinative. What I wrote for the new SC-P5000 is based on information from Epson America when I asked about it during preparation of the article. It is also useful to bear in mind that Epson's new Print Layout utility (please see my "Printing Can Be Fun and Easy" article) should eventually have a kind of "softproofing" feature working correctly. 

As for the advantages of using ABW, both the numbers and print appearance tell me I should continue having confidence in the findings I reported in the article. It can achieve slightly darker maximum Black than the ICC profile approach, but not clear to me that this extra bit of dMax is really a significant enough benefit to sacrifice the accuracy of the tone-mapping  etc. that we have by using a conventional application-managed ICC-based workflow.

[donbga]

Mark,

I did look at the Black and White printing section of your excellent review. I was under the misapprehension that ABW used a special profile under the hood, but as I understand your presentation ABW does not use a profile under the hood but sets the black and white points and then uses one of five possible tone curves. Apparently when one selects the paper in the print setup dialog, the necessary information is made available to the driver. This is in contrast to Eric's ABW profiles. With his ABW profiles one uses Photoshop manages the colors with his special ABW profile and then selects Advanced Black and White in the Color drop down menu of the Print Settings dialog and one of the five possible tone curves with the Advanced tab of Color Controls.

If one does not have the ABW profile, it is possible to select a normal ICC profile for that paper and then select Advanced B&W in the Color drop down menu, but Eric implies that this won't work properly. Do you know what would happen in this case?

From your review, I gather that ABW often offers little advantage over using normal ICC profiles and Photoshop manages colors.

Thanks,

Bill

It's been my experience that Eric Chan's ABW ICC profiles for the 3800/3880 have worked beautifully with Epson and other supported brands of paper. You should be able to create your own ABW ICC profiles with QTR for the P8000. The new black inks are bound to have higher DMAX.

[bjanes]

Hi Bill,

I remember back in the days of the Epson 3800 and Eric's excellent Epson printer blog where he described and offered his profiling approach to using the ABW mode. If I remember correctly, what his profiling did most importantly was to allow a form of soft-proofing so one could predict the effect of the ABW settings on the final print appearance. Perhaps since then certain things have changed that could affect whether the approach Eric developed back then could be workable now; I don't know. We need to bear in mind that eleven years have elapsed between the launch of the 3800 and now, so much could have changed that may or may not be determinative. What I wrote for the new SC-P5000 is based on information from Epson America when I asked about it during preparation of the article. It is also useful to bear in mind that Epson's new Print Layout utility (please see my "Printing Can Be Fun and Easy" article) should eventually have a kind of "softproofing" feature working correctly. 

As for the advantages of using ABW, both the numbers and print appearance tell me I should continue having confidence in the findings I reported in the article. It can achieve slightly darker maximum Black than the ICC profile approach, but not clear to me that this extra bit of dMax is really a significant enough benefit to sacrifice the accuracy of the tone-mapping  etc. that we have by using a conventional application-managed ICC-based workflow.

Mark,

Thanks again for sharing your vast experience and knowledge on printing. I will have to do some testing on my own, but my impression is that B/W printing using the regular color profiles and the usual RGB workflow is the simplest option and it also offers the ability to soft-proof.

If one is using Epson papers, the ABW with printer manages colors is a straightforward option. With the 3880 Eric Chan's ABW profiles can be used with the RGB printing pipeline following his instructions which are posted here. It is interesting to note that if one does not have ABW profiles, he suggests setting the target printer space to sRGB to obtain an sRGB tone curve and then printing with the RGB pipeline and invoking Advanced B/W in the color menu.

I see you posted ABW results for Hahn PhotoRag Baryta. What profile did you use and how did you set up the printing workflow? This information would be most helpful to me.

Thanks,

Bill

[Mark D Segal]

Hi Bill,

I don't know the details of the driver for the SC-P8000, but for the SC-P5000, to make a B&W print in ABW mode, one selects Printer Manages Color, then accesses the ABW option from within the printer driver and selects between the various luminance conditions provided therein; Epson recommends using "Dark" for what they call "better results", whatever that means! There is no application-managed profiling. I have no idea whether Eric's approach remains workable and reliable for these newer printers with their different inksets, but if you find a way of operating it and see good outcomes, I'd be most interesting in learning how you did it and what you found.

[Alan Goldhammer]

As I tried to point out in my earlier post, Eric's approach will only work with WinOS.  Makes no longer allows this approach with the, ABW driver.  The advantage of the QBS driver  is a deeper black, less color ink used so longevity should be better, and better shadow separation with a good b/w profile.  As I noted you have to use Roy Harrington's ARE tool to make such profiles.  I have some challenging images that look better when printed this way.

I'm overseas and it is difficult to search the archives but there are some good threads from five (??) years ago when Apple changed things.

Alan

[nma]

Can Mark comment on the EPSON software tool (free) called Print Layout which supposedly allows soft proofing of ABW files before they go to the printer? I quote from http://news.epson.com/news/epson-announces-print-layout-software

"Live Preview for Advanced Black-and-White Photo Mode1 – Directly fine-tune and preview black-and-white images within Epson Print Layout to achieve the ideal tonal range."

Is this real? Vaporware? Does it work? Is this the answer to the OP?

[Mark D Segal]

Can Mark comment on the EPSON software tool (free) called Print Layout which supposedly allows soft proofing of ABW files before they go to the printer? I quote from http://news.epson.com/news/epson-announces-print-layout-software

"Live Preview for Advanced Black-and-White Photo Mode1 – Directly fine-tune and preview black-and-white images within Epson Print Layout to achieve the ideal tonal range."

Is this real? Vaporware? Does it work? Is this the answer to the OP?

I already did that - in detail - "Printing Can Be Fun and Easy"

And no - it's not vaporware, but there are several issues being worked on.

[bjanes]

Hi Bill,

I don't know the details of the driver for the SC-P8000, but for the SC-P5000, to make a B&W print in ABW mode, one selects Printer Manages Color, then accesses the ABW option from within the printer driver and selects between the various luminance conditions provided therein; Epson recommends using "Dark" for what they call "better results", whatever that means! There is no application-managed profiling. I have no idea whether Eric's approach remains workable and reliable for these newer printers with their different inksets, but if you find a way of operating it and see good outcomes, I'd be most interesting in learning how you did it and what you found.

Mark,

Actually, I meant p800, not p8000 in my original post, but I imagine the work flow would be similar to the p5000. Since no profiles are involved in ABW, I would think that when you select color managed by printer and invoke ABW, for paper type you merely select the Epson paper that most closely matches the properties of the third party paper as suggested by the third party manufacturer. Sorry to belabor this point, but misconceptions die hard.

If I discover anything of interest, I will post my results but I think my conclusions will be very similar to yours.

Regards,

Bill

[Mark D Segal]

Ah, P800, OK. If you look at Figure 3 of my P800 Review (this website), you'll be able to compare ABW with application colour management for behaviour of the Blacks and deep quartertones. As for the workflow - yes, same as you describe below: get to the ABW mode from "Printer Manages Color".

[rdonson]

Bill, all I can say is that I have a P800 and print a lot of my B&W on Hahnemühle Photo Silk Baryta 310 and I'm very pleased by the ABW results. 

When I do tone images though I do that in Lr or PS and then print in color with Lr and my usual workflow.  I'm just not into wasting a lot of paper testing which ABW settings might produce the same tone as well. 

[nma]

I already did that - in detail - "Printing Can Be Fun and Easy"

And no - it's not vaporware, but there are several issues being worked on.

While I understand that you reviewed EPL, your comments were vague about its capabilities today for ABW, commenting on several apparent shortcomings. Do you feel it is ready for use to preview ABW?

[Mark D Segal]

No I wasn't vague. I said ithis: " At the time of writing, it isn’t soft proofing correctly. Epson is aware of this and working on fixing it." Couldn't be clearer. And no I have not been advised as to whether it's fixed yet.

[msoomro]

tag for ref

[texshooter]

If printing in ABW mode on non-Epson papers gives you unsatisfactory results, perhaps the best solution is to stick with Epson papers.  I use to fuss over figuring out how to build custom profiles specifically for Epson's ABW engine, but found the solutions to be too complicated and unnecessary.  I like the deep blacks that Epson Exhibition Fiber renders, so I use that paper.  If you stick with one paper for your B&W printing and grow accustom to its behavior,  you can always fine-tune a PS tone curve by eye alone and apply that curve to all your edited B&W negatives at the last step before clicking the print button.  It may not be as theoretically precise as using ICC profiles or softproofing, but I honestly think the Epson ABW mode is amazingly accurate--as long as you convert your images to either sRGB, aRGB, or Gray Gamma 2.2 before printing.  In my case , I don't even need a tonal curve adjustment at all to get my ABW prints to match my screen.

I would love to know if Canon printers yield better B&W prints on Canon papers than Epson printers yield on Epson papers.  The only reason I have not switched from Epson to Canon is because I am uncertain if Canon does a better job with advanced B&W printing.

[deanwork]

Forget about ABW. Use the MUCH superior Quadtone Rip for $50.00. Then you can linearize any media as well as fine tune print color, great split toning etc. If you do you will never go back.

If printing in ABW mode on non-Epson papers gives you unsatisfactory results, perhaps the best solution is to stick with Epson papers.  I use to fuss over figuring out how to build custom profiles specifically for Epson's ABW engine, but found the solutions to be too complicated and unnecessary.  I like the deep blacks that Epson Exhibition Fiber renders, so I use that paper.  If you stick with one paper for your B&W printing and grow accustom to its behavior,  you can always fine-tune a PS tone curve by eye alone and apply that curve to all your edited B&W negatives at the last step before clicking the print button.  It may not be as theoretically precise as using ICC profiles or softproofing, but I honestly think the Epson ABW mode is amazingly accurate--as long as you convert your images to either sRGB, aRGB, or Gray Gamma 2.2 before printing.  In my case , I don't even need a tonal curve adjustment at all to get my ABW prints to match my screen.

I would love to know if Canon printers yield better B&W prints on Canon papers than Epson printers yield on Epson papers.  The only reason I have not switched from Epson to Canon is because I am uncertain if Canon does a better job with advanced B&W printing.