Epson R3000 and Hahnemuehle Photo Rag

[Aryan Aqajani]

I am Mac user (Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4) and frequently calibrate my monitor with Spyder Elite 3. I have no problem printing color images with this printer using Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl paper with Official Ilford color profile. However, I am trying to print some TIF black and white scans from 6x7 negatives (Adobe RGB 1998) on Hahnemuehle Photo Rag 305gsm and/or Photo Rag Ultrasmooth 308gsm paper but I cannot find out why my black and white prints are greenish!?

I downloaded the official Hahnemuehle profiles for these papers, chose Velvet Fine Art Paper as recommended, chose Photoshop manages color, Color Settings under Printer Setting was off, Black Point Compensation ticked, Rendering was Relative Colorimetric, Matte Black chosen. Soft proofed them in Photoshop CS5, played with levels and curves to make it look as close as to original image. I even converted the Adobe 1998 file into Grayscale to remove any color cast I might have added to warm up tones, still no luck!!! There is a greenish cast over them!!!

Does anyone have any idea what might be the problem?

Thanks in advance,

[Alan Goldhammer]

Why aren't you using the ABW mode to print?  This will give you a deeper black point and a superior print.  You certainly won't have any of the "greenish" problems that you note.  Most (if not all) of the commercially available profiles are not optimized for B/W printing unless they specifically have lots of grey scale patches in the profile set.

[Aryan Aqajani]

Why aren't you using the ABW mode to print?  This will give you a deeper black point and a superior print.  You certainly won't have any of the "greenish" problems that you note.  Most (if not all) of the commercially available profiles are not optimized for B/W printing unless they specifically have lots of grey scale patches in the profile set.

Oh, I knew about ABW but was not too sure how to use it! I mean I am  not sure if I should use the Printer Manages Color and apply the specific color profile for that paper or don't need to use any profile at all!?

I will give it a go today to see if there would be any cast!

Thanks heaps man,

[Aryan Aqajani]

Alan,

I can confirm that the problem is solved now! Epson ABW is the way to go for printing black and white! Thank you so much again for the hint

Cheers,