how do u prepare an image before sending to Epson ABW?

[Aristoc]

I wanted to know how I must convert an image into black and white before I am going to send it to my R2880 which uses the ABW printer driver ? Apparentyly this is a gray scale printer driver and so the image should not have any colour in it? What does this mean? Do I have to simply go to image > adjust > black and white in photoshop ? or do Ih ave to go to mode > gray scale ? This is the part that is confusing in eric chans site.

Apparently if I dont do this step then whatever edits I make to the tone of the image are just going to be wiped out when I send the image to the ABW driver for printing.

THank you

[digitaldog]

The idea of the Advanced B&W is IT does the color to B&W conversions for you. So you can just send it a color image. Probably want to send it Adobe RGB (1998).

[Aristoc]

You can but that is not what  I would do.

[digitaldog]

What do you want to do?

IF you convert the color image to “B&W” in Photoshop and send it to ABW, its going to convert that anyway. Its a black box. It takes what you feed it and converts using the driver (and settings for ABW in the driver) with no preview of what you’ll get. ABW does a nice job, does use less ink but you have to put all your faith into its processing. IF instead you want to produce a certain look using Photoshop to convert, you then have to send it through the driver just like a color image, with a good output profile and bypass ABW. But you don’t get the same printing (reduced ink as an example) as you would using ABW.

[Aristoc]

thats not what i have been reading digital dog.

this link for example, the photographer uses silver efex pro...does some editing  and then sends that image to the ABW driver, where further tweaking in the driver settings is done. But he still was able to do editing in Silver efex pro first.You seem to suggest that you should just not bother with any of that. It's not what I've been reading everywhere.




http://www.ronmartblog.com/2010/08/how-to-using-epsons-advanced-b-photo.html

[digitaldog]

thats not what i have been reading digital dog.
this link for example, the photographer uses silver efex pro...does some editing  and then sends that image to the ABW driver, where further tweaking in the driver settings is done. But he still was able to do editing in Silver efex pro first.You seem to suggest that you should just not bother with any of that. It's not what I've been reading everywhere.

You can apply such an effect and send it to ABW, but that doesn’t mean that’s what’s coming out of the printer! Again, the ABW is a proprietary, black box for converting to its own flavor of B&W and then using a certain number of inks after that conversion. You can send it a toned B&W you made in Photoshop, but that’s now what’s going to come out on the printer.

[digitaldog]

http://www.ronmartblog.com/2010/08/how-to-using-epsons-advanced-b-photo.html

His first fatal mistake is saying “Before people ask, it should be noted that I am aware of Eric Chan’s Epson 3800: Step-By-Step Printing Workflow and I disagree with enough of it that I can’t recommend it“.
Any idea who Eric is?

There are lots of other misunderstandings in the piece (he’s using ProPhoto with a 1.8 TRC, the driver really expect 2.2 hence my recommendation on using Adobe RGB (1998)). He talks about rendering intents but no profile is being used here etc.

Test it yourself. Convert an image to B&W. Print it through the ABW. Do they match?

[Schewe]

When outputting to the Epson ABW mode, you can send the driver a color image. The driver will then to it's own panchromatic conversion from Color to the ABW output. You don't have any control over that conversion but it may produce useful results.

Alternatively, you can do a B&W conversion in Photoshop with your favorite recipe and send that to the ABW driver...if you have added any color toning to the image, that will be ignored but the base B&W conversion will work fine for the ABW mode. If you have modified the color tone in Photoshop then the ABW mode will kill the color effects, in that case you'll need to print through the regular color engine using profiles.

[Schewe]

His first fatal mistake is saying “Before people ask, it should be noted that I am aware of Eric Chan’s Epson 3800: Step-By-Step Printing Workflow and I disagree with enough of it that I can’t recommend it“.
Any idea who Eric is?

LOL...that's pretty funny. Fact is, if you understand Eric's profiles you CAN keep an image in color and soft proof how the color>BW conversion will be handled...I suspect the reason he doesn't "recommend it" is the following:

From his post:
"Disclosure
I may get a commission if you purchase using selected links in this article. Thanks for supporting this blog by using the links!"

Which means of course, he's pushing Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro because he gets something when you buy it from the link in the article.

I have nothing against Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro...heck I've never used it but there are a ton of ways to get really excellent B&W from color images.

I'll also point out that his tutorial for printing out to the Epson ABW mode from Lightroom is wrong...in this rare limited case, you actually want to use intentional double-color management by having Lightroom handle color and set the output profile to be Adobe RGB and then yes, also set the driver to use ABW. The reason is that the ABW mode of the driver is expecting Adobe RGB gamma images in the pipeline. So you will get less good results from Lightroom using the author's approach-Lightroom is sending out ProPhoto RGB which is causing a gamma mismatch in the driver. Yes, you can alter the gamma in the ABW gamma adjustments but is made better by simply sending Adobe RGB to the driver in the first place.

[Alan Goldhammer]

I wanted to know how I must convert an image into black and white before I am going to send it to my R2880 which uses the ABW printer driver ?

Jeff and Andrew have answered the key questions about sending an image to the printer.  What you don't say in your post is whether or not you have converted the image to B&W and made any necessary changes to it or if you are just taking a color image sending down the pipe and hoping for the best.  You really should be doing the conversion and then subsequent modification on a B&W image to get the best results.  There are a host of books and other resources out there for using PS and/or LR to achieve the end result (I recommend the book by Alsheimer and Hughes, "Black and White in Photoshop and Lightroom).  If you don't follow this kind of workflow, you cannot possibly hope for optimal results.

Alan

[Aristoc]

THe reason I didnt mention the way I converted my B&W was because I wasn't sure i was doing it correctly. I have been trying image > adjustments > black and white in PS. I know there's lots of other methods. I dont have experience using them yet.

[Aristoc]

I have nothing against Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro...heck I've never used it but there are a ton of ways to get really excellent B&W from color images.

I'll also point out that his tutorial for printing out to the Epson ABW mode from Lightroom is wrong...in this rare limited case, you actually want to use intentional double-color management by having Lightroom handle color and set the output profile to be Adobe RGB and then yes, also set the driver to use ABW. The reason is that the ABW mode of the driver is expecting Adobe RGB gamma images in the pipeline. So you will get less good results from Lightroom using the author's approach-Lightroom is sending out ProPhoto RGB which is causing a gamma mismatch in the driver. Yes, you can alter the gamma in the ABW gamma adjustments but is made better by simply sending Adobe RGB to the driver in the first place.

OK now this is really what I am trying to undertand. How do I "set the output profile to be ADobe RGB" ? I am stuck on this part.

[Aristoc]

When outputting to the Epson ABW mode, you can send the driver a color image. The driver will then to it's own panchromatic conversion from Color to the ABW output. You don't have any control over that conversion but it may produce useful results.

Alternatively, you can do a B&W conversion in Photoshop with your favorite recipe and send that to the ABW driver...if you have added any color toning to the image, that will be ignored but the base B&W conversion will work fine for the ABW mode. If you have modified the color tone in Photoshop then the ABW mode will kill the color effects, in that case you'll need to print through the regular color engine using profiles.

I am also trying to understant this part...After converting to b&w and making edits/adjustments, how do I make sure that I have not added any color toning to the image  ? Then I will at least have some reasonable expectation of what is going to come out at the end after sending the image to ABW.

Am I suppose to convert the final image profile in a dialog box somwhere just before going to print ? I was reading about dot gain 20% or some thing along those lines but I don't understand this fully.

[Aristoc]

YOu know a lot about his stuff Shewe. Any further tutorials that you recommend ?

[Aristoc]

i did my own testing:
I did 3 black and white prints in RGB colour mode. I converted them using channel mixer and then did some curve adjustments. Nothing too fancy.
Still in RGB colour mode I then proceeded to print out of PS CS4.

1. The first print was photoshop manages colours and I used the ICC profile for my paper. I turned ICM off so the epson printer driver had nothing to do with this image. THe print preview that showed up, looked like it was a little bit cool. When the print came out, it was indeed a bit cool.

2. So I then printed out an image where photoshop manages colours and my ICC profile for my paper. THis time I also turned ABW on. So both the photoshop and the printer driver would work. I wanted to see if the printer ABW driver overides photoshop. Indeed, the image came out neutral with no cool colour cast. So it looks like ABW ignored the ICC profile for the paper I had set.

3. Thirdly I set up printing so that only the printer driver ABW was active. Photoshop did not manage colours. Only the 'printer managers colours' was used. Then in the ABW settings I did what I had for the other two prints was to only set neutral and 'dark' , not the default darker. The results was a nice neutral image with no colour cast. This image looked the same as the image that was printed when I had both photoshop manager colours and ABW manage colours together. Except, it was ever soo slightly darker. Just barely. Which is probably the result of the 'dark' setting. I guess I could use 'normal' as a personal preference but the difference was too subtle really.

I have t mention that the images between RGB and Greyscale looked a little bit different in terms of one apperaed a little bit lighter and the other a little bit darker.

[Aristoc]

I had a look at Lynda.com 's quick video tutorial about epson's ABW mode.

The narator says you can use either monochorm RBG, colour RBG or gray scale.  The printer driver is expecting gamma 2.2 so if your working image profile is sRGB or aRGB the all you have to do is click on 'no colour manangment' in the print dialogue boxes and then go ahead and use the ABW mode. The tonality of the image will be preserved.

If using prophoto which is gamma 1.1, then you have to set 'PS manages colours' and then set the printer profile to 'sRBG'. to preserve the tonality of the image.



Peter

This has sorted things out for me very well so far.....in case anyone wants to know. And based on my experiements above, it appears to be true.

[madmanchan]

To make a long story short, the ABW driver is essentially a grayscale driver. It expects its input (i.e., the image you feed it) to be sRGB gamma-encoded, or approximately gamma 2.2.

Sending a RGB vs a grayscale file to the ABW driver does not matter if they use the same gamma encoding (e.g., ProPhoto RGB vs Gray Gamma 1.8  ).

[Aristoc]

Thanks Eric.