No, there's no consensus. And there's not likely ever going to be any consensus whatsoever.
The different processes all have their own advantages and disadvantages. Which process is the right fit for a particular purpose can only be decided by the individual trying to make that fit.
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Agree with that.
Ink jet printing has brought more control on the printing process when compared to wet traditional darkroom. But this control also requires a somewhat long learning curve. I have been able to do wonderful ink jet prints from pictures that were hardly printable on the wet darkroom by tweaking curves and using contrast masking. As for B/W prints, once you have linearize your paper/printer curve, it's deadly accurate for making prints.
There are indeed several processes for printing in B/W:
- ICC color profiles: simply a highly precise ICC color profile with accurate neutral tones around grey levels (all ICC profiles should be so...but....).
- Epson ABW: ABW is basically a good attempt by Epson for providing a linear metamerism-free B/W driver for their printer. The density response is quite linear for Epson papers but requires some profiling for other papers. Eric Chan uses B/W ICC profiles for linearing ABW response. I use another approach that I'll explain in my soon to be finished site. Canon has something close to ABW in their printer driver too.
- QTR (Roy Harrington - QuadTone RIP): highly versatile with a lot of controls. You can use whatever inks you want (apart from OEM inks). I have been told that the improvement of Epson Ultrachrome inks stopped making mandatory the use of non OEM inks for getting good B/W prints. As of today, you can rely on OEM inks for B/W prints, also expecting good archival features.
Whatever process you choose, be warned that what's important when printing with ink jets printers is the combination of printer with printing paper since different papers react differently to the inks. Simply said, you cannot assume that you can profile your printer for any available paper once and for all. For each new paper, you must calibrate. You can more or less assume (depending on the brand and model) that profiling a specific model of printer for some paper will also work on any other printers of the same model. This has been verified for Epson pro-printers (and also for R2400 if I'am right). This is controversial for latest high-end Canon printers. If this assumption is true for your printer, you can surf the net and grab some profiles done by other people.
I strongly recommend buying a spectro or densitometer because all the processes I mentioned require such a device in some ways. Colorvision Prinfix-Pro or X-rite Eye 1 will do the job. Although it could seem expensive at first, it will make you save time, energy and frustration.
Also, be prepared to face/enter the world of ink jet printing papers. The choice of printing papers for B/W is huge, especially when compared to the spare choice of silver printing paper.
Personally, I use Epson printers and print in B/W using profiled ABW. It took me some amount of time profiling my system (= linearizing the printer response). It took (and takes) me some amount of time testing papers because paper technology is still evolving. But I get better results using ink jets printing that I ever did with wet darkroom because I have more
controls of the whole process. Once the printing process is mastered, it is incredibly rewarding. Once your workflow is profiled, it's like a piece of cake making prints. This has never been the case for me with wet darkroom. I don't regret all these hours spent in the red dark environment, smelling the acid vapors of the stop bath, while analyzing the inverted negated pictures, and then suffering the bright light for visually checking the test prints. I don't regret those 10 tiring hours sessions of wet darkroom. Oohhh not at all!
There is a learning curve with this new technology. Don't forget that for a long time, printing pictures was a job for some people (I don't speak about the guy that pressed the button at the mini-lab but the genuine "printer", the guy that can print your pictures in such a way that you will scream in wonder). Yep!, there's some work of your own to do.
_michel moreaux
Switzerland