Need for ICC Profiles with B&W?

[PeterBrown]

If the printing that I am doing is predominantly B&W, are specifice ICC profiles for specific papers necessary?  I'm inclined to think with B&W they don't matter, but maybe I missing something.

Thanks,
Peter

[terrywyse]

If the printing that I am doing is predominantly B&W, are specifice ICC profiles for specific papers necessary?  I'm inclined to think with B&W they don't matter, but maybe I missing something.

What you may be missing is that even with "B&W" images, you're still printing in color using all the inks in the printer. It's generally not possible or even advisable to print using black ink only as the black inks in these inkjet printers, especially Epsons, are far from being a neutral black...the black ink is generally very warm. In any case, you still need a good ICC profile so the right ink "mixture" is produced to deliver a neutral gray.

Terry

[Ernst Dinkla]

If the printing that I am doing is predominantly B&W, are specifice ICC profiles for specific papers necessary?  I'm inclined to think with B&W they don't matter, but maybe I missing something.

Thanks,
Peter

You didn't mention what printer you use. The HP Z models and the HP B9180 use near neutral quad/tritone inks in B&W mode and no color inks if desired. The B&W driver mode uses internal LUTs comparable to profiles + the printer calibration numbers to deliver linear output (Z3100). What is left is whether you want to adapt the printed greys to the paper white or to keep them more absolute neutral. There are color ink sliders for that. Then there is an optional choice to give the greyscale a more perceptual linearity with the use of custom QTR profiles in the workflow.

That all may sound complex and it is in a way. With the driver's color mode + the Z model integrated calibration + profiling you still get a B&W print with all the Black and Grey inks used and very little color + an adaption to the paper white or not (a choice in the profile creation) + the perceptually correct tone range. The con is that the Dmax is slightly less than with the B&W mode as described above.



met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

spectral plots of +100 inkjet papers:
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm

[peterurban]

What terry says is correct. As long as you are working in a color space such as Adobe RGB, ProPhoto RGB etc to manipulate and print your images the icc profiles are still critical to your results. As he mentioned it is in-advisable to print in black mode only since this will reduce almost all printer's ability to achieve best results in resolution and rendition.

You also loose the ability to tone your monochromatic images i.e. with a nice sepia type tone.

Finally if you do decide to work in BW mode your monitor is still a color device and the monitor profile is responsible for translating the BW  values of your images into hopefully neutral tones on the screen.

All in all it is best practice to properly calibrate and profile printer and monitor and then work in color mode even for your BW work.

[Ernst Dinkla]

The thread starter didn't mention BO printing but B&W printing. And I presume printing from a B&W driver mode.

Several wide format + desktop printers do no longer have a Black Only mode. If you select the HP, Canon, Epson B&W driver modes like Epson's ABW mode you will get black + medium grey + light grey + some color ink to neutralise the grey inks. On the HP Z models the quad inks are already neutral and no color ink is used at all with greyscale images yet the B&W mode allows color ink additions to create sepia or any other color toning. For Canon it is something in between the HP and Epson settings. Color toning for B&W is possible with all the B&W driver modes mentioned here.

Additional drivers:

With the cheap QuadTone Rip and its linearisation + profiling tools excellent B&W printing is possible on Epson models without the use of the color inks both with the original inkset or custom quad inksets. Black Only in several varieties too. Color ink can be added for sepia, to neutralise the B&W print or to adapt to the paper white. QTR can use a kind of ICC B&W profiling. The same QTR profiles can be created for the OEM B&W driver modes. Preferred assigned profiles for the greyscale images: Gamma 2.2 and QTR greyscale space.
With the True B&W RIP similar printing is possible from a Mac to Canon printers.
More expensive are color RIPs like Imageprint and Ergosoft Studio that have more advanced B&W features than the usual color RIPs have.

B&W in color mode:

If the condition is that the B&W prints are made through the driver's color mode with either greyscale or R=G=B color images then it is recommended to use an ICC printer profile and to print from tagged image files. With greyscale Gamma 2.2 or 1.8 assigned (or the perceptual more correct QTR space) or with a neutral RGB file a colorspace profile like sRGB or Colormatch. There are some profile creation programs that can enhance the neutrality in the print with an iterative target print + measuring step.


I wouldn't state that any of the methods above is better but in my experience I can get a somewhat better Dmax when printing through the B&W mode. The color driver workflow is easier but will add more composite grey mixes in case of Epson printers but not with HP Z models. Composite greys tend to create less consistency in the greys due to changed print conditions, create less color constancy in the greys with changing light conditions "metamerism" and shifts in neutrality in time when  one of the color inks fades faster than the other ones.


met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

Try: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/

[JeffKohn]

All in all it is best practice to properly calibrate and profile printer and monitor and then work in color mode even for your BW work.

I agree with Ernst, what you say about BW mode is true for some of the older printers that had a "Black-only" mode, that used a single black ink and resulted in fairly coarse dithering. But I don't think that's what we're talking about here.

The monochrome modes on today's printers are different. They use multiple black and gray inks, so the tonality and dithering are just as smooth as printing in RGB mode. And since these printing modes use less color ink, the archival ratings are better than for an RGB-mode prints. I've also found that I can get slightly better shadow separation in monochrome mode than with the RGB print mode on my Canon 6300.

It's still possible to use ICC profiling with monochrome modes, thanks to the profile tools included with the Quadtone RIP software package. In fact I recommend this approach, as i feel it gives better results than using monochrome mode without profiling (especially for matte papers). It also gives you the ability to soft-proof in Photoshop.

It's true that you have more control over toning effects (warm, cool, split-tone, etc) if you stay and RGB mode and do your toning in Photoshop. This along with the simplicity of having a single print workflow for color and B/W images can be compelling reasons to stick with RGB mode for all printing. But achieving a simple warm/cool/neutral print is pretty easy with the monochrome printing modes, and i feel that the results are worth the trouble of having a slightly different workflow for monochrome images.

[Vuurtoren]

Hi Peter, If you have advanced b/w mode on your printer then you can use very specific b/w icc profiles for a lot of papers.  Ignore all colour spaces on your monitor as you will not need them.  If you operate from a camera raw programme then load your image from raw into Photoshop as a gamma 2.2 working space, you do not need any rgb working spaes at all.  I have tested extensivley with the b/w filter in photoshop and with other conversion methods, and to be honest while I was once a fan of the common ways to print b/w, since I discovered B/W ICC profiles and the painless gamma 2.2 working space - after many tests - discovered how much better this was; but the reason for this conversion is simple:  The advanced b/w mode in a printer takes no notice of rgb spaces in any format so working within the b/w working space yields great tonal accuracy because that is what the ABW mode in the printer is going to print out, mores accurate than what comes from an rgb working space.

Eric chan has created ICC profiles specifically for b/w printing on many papers and gives extensive instructions about what to do.  If you have any questions do not hesitate to ask me as I use his profiles quite often on different papers.

This method of printing black and white is much much more satisfactory and yields much higher results than sending an rgb colour space image via a photoshop b/w filter to the printer.