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Author Topic: What is the best black-and-white printing method?  (Read 4110 times)

cagen

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What is the best black-and-white printing method?
« on: September 19, 2012, 12:01:32 pm »

I am Epson pro 9900 being used.

What is the best black-and-white printing method?

QTR?

abw?

or RGB icc profile with ps ?


Look forward to hearing your feedback

Thank you for reading my post
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walter.sk

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Re: What is the best black-and-white printing method?
« Reply #1 on: September 19, 2012, 12:20:53 pm »

I am using the Epson 4900.  I do not use QTR because I do not fully understand the steps involved in developing softproofing capabilities and profiles for it in Windows.  I have tried conversions with ABW and with RGB profiles.  Most of my B&W files are produced in NIK Silver Efex Pro 2.  I find that I have more control over the final print when I send an RGB file to the printer than when I use  ABW.
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cybis

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Re: What is the best black-and-white printing method?
« Reply #2 on: September 19, 2012, 12:41:08 pm »

Here is what I do:
•   Use ABW (as it provides better tone consistency)
•   Adjust 'paper config' > 'color density' for your paper. (The paper I use can take +15%)
•   Adjust ABW advanced control > vertical + horizontal toning (perfectly neutral grays are not very appealing; very subtle toning can be achieved in ABW)
•   Use QTR to create a linearization profile.
•   Use the profile in Qimage v2011.136 or newer (older version have a color management bug).
•   With finest details selected, Qimage will resample to 720dpi instead of 360dpi.
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Peter Langham

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Re: What is the best black-and-white printing method?
« Reply #3 on: September 19, 2012, 12:48:14 pm »

When discussing the "best" black and white methods, you must at least consider a dedicated black and white printing system.  These include Piezography and the various systems developed by Paul Roark.  Also review the recent post on LuLa about Imageprint.   Using OEM inks, I prefer using QTR for greater control and the ability to split tone.
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RFPhotography

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Re: What is the best black-and-white printing method?
« Reply #4 on: September 20, 2012, 09:07:58 am »

QTR is a very good tool.  Not especially good for the 'technophobe'.  It does have a learning curve and if you want to take full advantage of it you need to invest in some other hardware.

ABW without profiles is a black box and results can be variable.  No softproofing.

ABW with properly made profiles produces wonderful results.  This puts you back in a position where you can softproof properly and you're using a 'grey' managed workflow.  Not many ABW profiles available.  Eric Chan has some for the 3800 (maybe the 3880 too?) on this site.  You can probably get some made from a reputable service provider or, invest in the hardware and learn to make your own.

RGB also provides very good prints.  DMax not quite as high has with ABW and more colour ink (particularly yellow) used which may shorten longevity somewhat and/or lead to tonal shifts.

Pick your poison.

Third party inksets can work very well but can also be a disaster.  Fatal head clogs are a very real possibility.  If you also print colour, your cost is significantly higher because you need to have two printers.
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: What is the best black-and-white printing method?
« Reply #5 on: September 20, 2012, 02:12:49 pm »

Be aware that ABW profiles only work on Win computers and that may change.  Apple OS does not permit their use.  There are several threads you can look up that discuss this matter.
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uaiomex

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Re: What is the best black-and-white printing method?
« Reply #6 on: September 20, 2012, 04:29:56 pm »

What do you exactly mean by saying it won't work with Mac? I just printed a B&W print with OSX 10.6.8 using the ABW with a 7880. Do you mean it doesn't work properly?
tia
Eduardo

Be aware that ABW profiles only work on Win computers and that may change.  Apple OS does not permit their use.  There are several threads you can look up that discuss this matter.
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: What is the best black-and-white printing method?
« Reply #7 on: September 20, 2012, 05:23:00 pm »

I am not a Mac user and quite frankly it's not my job to do the archive search for you.  I have no idea whether you have the most current Epson driver installed for you printer.  All I do know is that with the current driver and Mac OS, it won't allow you to print in ABW mode with a profile.  You can only print an unprofiled image.

EDIT:  I guess I should be charitable with the Day of Atonement coming up.  See this thread:  http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=58778.0
« Last Edit: September 20, 2012, 05:25:55 pm by Alan Goldhammer »
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RFPhotography

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Re: What is the best black-and-white printing method?
« Reply #8 on: September 20, 2012, 06:40:39 pm »

You know, Alan, for someone who had no idea what Andrew and Jeff, et al were talking about wrt the Mac OS, Epson drivers, ABW and profiles you're being more than a little heavy-handed in your reply to the previous poster.  And let's be brutally honest, you had no clue what they were talking about. 

@uaiomex - ABW is not a natively colour (grey) managed process.  It's a proprietary printer driver path that is supposed to be optimised for printing b&w.  It's designed to work as a black box.  You take what it gives you and aren't supposed to do anything else with it.  Given that ABW was designed as a black box it was not designed to be used with ICC profiles.  Big downside is you couldn't soft proof with it.

Prior to, about, a year ago you were able to effectively override the black box and kludge it to allow the use of specially made profiles both in the Mac and Windows operating systems.  Eric Chan (of Adobe) created a number of profiles for the 3800 and 3880 printers and before he shut down his custom profiling service would create profiles for other Epson printers to be used with ABW.  As these were true ICC profiles, you could soft proof and still print having the benefits of ABW (more black/less colour ink used, deeper DMax).  Using these profiles produces lovely prints that are far and away better than what ABW produces without profiles.

Roughly a year ago, I believe, Apple changed the way colour management works in the Mac OS.  It stopped allowing you to override so ICC profiles can no longer be used with ABW on a Mac running OS and driver versions of about a year ago.  You can still print with ABW, just not with profiles.  ABW is, for all intents and purposes, a specially built 'printer manages colour' option.  Apple has stopped allowing you to select a printer managed pipeline when selecting application (Photoshop or LR) managed colour (grey).  What they've done is eliminated the possibility of double colour management in printing if you forget to turn off printer colour management (as with most things Apple, they've dumbed it down).  The downside is it eliminates the ability to use profiles with ABW.  The Windows OS, as of current Windows 7 and Epson driver version 6.5 (on the 3800, can't speak for what the current version on other printers is) does still allow you to override the ABW black box and use profiles to print with the ABW pipeline (less colour ink, better DMax).
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WalterEG

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Re: What is the best black-and-white printing method?
« Reply #9 on: September 20, 2012, 06:47:41 pm »

Image-Print.

Or .... my preferred option of a Durst L1200, a red light and some trays of smelly stuff.  LOL.
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uaiomex

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Re: What is the best black-and-white printing method?
« Reply #10 on: September 20, 2012, 07:16:41 pm »

Thanks so much Bob, much more rich and enlightening that what I originally asked to curb my limited knowledge about digital printing.

Alan, thanks man for the link, I'll check it out.

As usual, I got more help than requested. Great, great forum.

Eduardo
 

You know, Alan, for someone who had no idea what Andrew and Jeff, et al were talking about wrt the Mac OS, Epson drivers, ABW and profiles you're being more than a little heavy-handed in your reply to the previous poster.  And let's be brutally honest, you had no clue what they were talking about. 

@uaiomex - ABW is not a natively colour (grey) managed process.  It's a proprietary printer driver path that is supposed to be optimised for printing b&w.  It's designed to work as a black box.  You take what it gives you and aren't supposed to do anything else with it.  Given that ABW was designed as a black box it was not designed to be used with ICC profiles.  Big downside is you couldn't soft proof with it.

Prior to, about, a year ago you were able to effectively override the black box and kludge it to allow the use of specially made profiles both in the Mac and Windows operating systems.  Eric Chan (of Adobe) created a number of profiles for the 3800 and 3880 printers and before he shut down his custom profiling service would create profiles for other Epson printers to be used with ABW.  As these were true ICC profiles, you could soft proof and still print having the benefits of ABW (more black/less colour ink used, deeper DMax).  Using these profiles produces lovely prints that are far and away better than what ABW produces without profiles.

Roughly a year ago, I believe, Apple changed the way colour management works in the Mac OS.  It stopped allowing you to override so ICC profiles can no longer be used with ABW on a Mac running OS and driver versions of about a year ago.  You can still print with ABW, just not with profiles.  ABW is, for all intents and purposes, a specially built 'printer manages colour' option.  Apple has stopped allowing you to select a printer managed pipeline when selecting application (Photoshop or LR) managed colour (grey).  What they've done is eliminated the possibility of double colour management in printing if you forget to turn off printer colour management (as with most things Apple, they've dumbed it down).  The downside is it eliminates the ability to use profiles with ABW.  The Windows OS, as of current Windows 7 and Epson driver version 6.5 (on the 3800, can't speak for what the current version on other printers is) does still allow you to override the ABW black box and use profiles to print with the ABW pipeline (less colour ink, better DMax).
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hugowolf

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Re: What is the best black-and-white printing method?
« Reply #11 on: September 20, 2012, 08:48:39 pm »

As far as I know, the 3880 ABW can't be used with profiles using the latest Windows driver either.

Brian A
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cybis

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Re: What is the best black-and-white printing method?
« Reply #12 on: September 20, 2012, 09:14:04 pm »

As far as I know, the 3880 ABW can't be used with profiles using the latest Windows driver either.
It works on Windows + Qimage with Epson x900. The driver doesn’t know an image it processes had a profile applied to it first. ABW will throw away any color information. The point of the profile is to linearize lightness value only. ABW takes care of the color tones. How is the 3880 different?
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JeffKohn

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Re: What is the best black-and-white printing method?
« Reply #13 on: September 20, 2012, 11:06:39 pm »

It works on Windows + Qimage with Epson x900. The driver doesn’t know an image it processes had a profile applied to it first. ABW will throw away any color information. The point of the profile is to linearize lightness value only. ABW takes care of the color tones. How is the 3880 different?
Agreed, and this shouldn't be a problem with Photoshop printing either, since you can just convert to the ABW profile before doing the print (that's what I do with my ipf and Canon's print plugin).  For that matter,  I don't see why this same approach wouldn't work just fine on the Mac, as well.
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Jeff Kohn
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: What is the best black-and-white printing method?
« Reply #14 on: September 21, 2012, 07:05:36 am »

You know, Alan, for someone who had no idea what Andrew and Jeff, et al were talking about wrt the Mac OS, Epson drivers, ABW and profiles you're being more than a little heavy-handed in your reply to the previous poster.  And let's be brutally honest, you had no clue what they were talking about. 
You are right I was heavy handed and did post the link to the previous thread.  I did understand the post and have a complete clue about what they are talking about since I do a lot of B/W printing using ABW profiles on a Win7 machine.  The problem and it's been well documented since the introduction of ABW is that the output is not necessarily linear and one can make adjustments using PS curves (and a lot of this was documented by Eric Chan on his Epson 3800 website).  The issue here is that this relies on a 'trial and error' method.  The ABW soft proofing approach allows one to make the adjustments the same way that we would do in making a color print.  We can argue that the ABW printing system is a black box and ABW profiles were/are a kludge but it did work for the intended purpose.  I know there are a number of us that are disappointed that this tool may no longer be useful.

Quote
  What they've done is eliminated the possibility of double colour management in printing if you forget to turn off printer colour management (as with most things Apple, they've dumbed it down).  The downside is it eliminates the ability to use profiles with ABW.  The Windows OS, as of current Windows 7 and Epson driver version 6.5 (on the 3800, can't speak for what the current version on other printers is) does still allow you to override the ABW black box and use profiles to print with the ABW pipeline (less colour ink, better DMax).
ABW profiles also work on the 3880 with version 6.60 so I'm unsure about Brian's reported experience.  I just checked the Epson 3880 site and didn't see a driver later than this version.

Sorry if I came across as being too snippy!

Alan
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Light Seeker

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Re: What is the best black-and-white printing method?
« Reply #15 on: September 21, 2012, 06:34:51 pm »

For Mac users Roy Harrington has just released a new layout and printing tool. It allows an image (or images) to be sent directly to a print driver without any OS X colour management being applied (Yes!). I have yet to try it but it appears that an ABM profile, or a similar profile created using the QTR profile utility, could first be applied to an image and then send directly through the printer driver untouched by OS X.

You can read more about it and download a trial here. . . .

http://www.quadtonerip.com/html/QTRprinttool.html

Terry.
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