Printing B&W on Epson 4880

[Mark F]

I'm about to print b&w on my 4880 for the first time.  I remember reading posts a few years ago that printing b&w on an Epson was not straight forward and special incantations and incense were required. I also seem to remember that one of our gurus had written a step by step guide on what to do. In searching this forum the only document I came up with is from 2009 and is Eric's Chan's "Epson 3800: Step-By-Step Printing Workflow". Does anyone know if the problem still exists with the 4880 and if so, is Eric's document the one I am thinking of?

Thanks.

[aduke]

I follow Eric's tutorial on my 4880 and get satisfactory B&W prints. Whether you would think they were satisfactory is another question. All of my prints are on matte paper and do not have the DR you would get on glossy paper. Also, I've not measured the linearity of the output.

The tutorial has a section on printing B&W from Lightroom, which I followed. It is not difficult, and, by saving a B&W preset, very easy to return to that configuration.

I hope this helps.

Alan

[PeterAit]

Printing B&W with a 4880 is a snap. The easiest way is to use Epson's advanced B&W mode, which gives very good results with some degree of customizability.

[deanwork]

and the best way is with QTR.

[Mark F]

I print through LR3. Isn't QTR a CS5 plugin?

[deanwork]

It is an any kind of photoshop plug-in and if you really care about bw you should investigate it. It's way beyond Lightroom for tonal control.

[digitaldog]

KISS. Start with the Epson Advanced B&W. I suspect you’ll be pretty happy. If you want to go farther, there are other solutions including something like ImagePrint. But if you’re happy with the ABW from Epson, which is easy and very effective, be happy that you’re happy <g>.

[deanwork]

QTR is better than both of those by a long shot. Epson is behind in bw and has been for a decade or more.

[Mark F]

More complicated than I expected. I thought that the issue was getting the right b&w driver for my 4880 and that software like NIK Silver Effex Pro and QTR were for extending LR3's development controls. Is this not correct?

[digitaldog]

More complicated than I expected.

Exactly! So you have two options that are simple and cost nothing after getting the printer. First is to use a 3rd party product to do the conversions for you, or do this in Photoshop or Lightroom, and then you have to use an ICC profile and print the document like you would a color image. 2nd is to let the ABW in the Epson driver handle everything. It does the conversions, it controls its unique ink delivery for this process. IF you convert yourself, you don’t honor that conversion going through ABW. Its a black box in terms of handling this process although there are options in the driver to tone the print etc. So I’d start there. See how it works for you. You’ll be using less ink which saves some money and the prints are more light fast. If you are not happy with these results, then you can look at a 3rd party option, some mentioned here.

[Mark F]

Thank you, Andrew. That sounds like the way to go.