The question is even in Windows and LR that you can chose both paper profile + ABW, if Epson driver listen to paper profile and your changes in soft proof or just ignore it? the fact that you have option in Windows to choose both maybe is just a software glitch and ABW just overrule everything, including your changes in soft proof and paper profile even in Windows. it can be easily tested.
The history of this stretches back to the introduction of the Epson 2400 and the first ABW mode in an Epson driver. After that more Epson, HP and Canon varieties of ABW appeared for many printers. At least for the Epsons and HPs with a recommendation to use printer CM in that B&W mode. I'm not familiar with the Canon recommendation. Steve Kale then experimented with the 2400 + Epson driver and the then quite new QTR profile creation application. It worked on the two OSses and Eric Chan made his own version of that approach. The advantages were at least a higher Dmax than possible with the color managed color modes and for Epsons a higher reduction of the color inks in the B&W prints than possible in the color mode. No OS or Adobe program then obstructed the different methods to get good Dmax with a custom profiled/linearized printer in B&W mode.
This ended when Apple made Colorsync dominant in the chain of color management. It assigned a color space to an image on its own decisions without offering the user a choice to alter the choices in a transparent way. More people suggested a trick to fool the system and that worked for some time. It certainly was not that Apple had a fluid cooperation of Adobe or Epson at that time. It not only made the B&W profiling impossible but also the printing of profiling targets through the OEM printer path. The adapted drivers appeared later and Adobe's CS got their CM OFF amputated after that, also for the Windows version. An Adobe replacement application for printing targets with an OEM driver appeared months later after the CM OFF was taken out. It had a flaw too, still has.
This shift in Apple's color management policy has only one goal: make the color management fool proof. I doubt it improves that route much for fools, they tend to make more mistakes along the way (Adobe could as well take out all user choices in PS for profile assigning). It did make it more difficult for people with skills in printing, color management, profile creation and in that niche of B&W profiled B&W printing. On the Colorsync list many complained about the new approach, knowledgeable members there, not a typical whiners forum.
To call this remaining Windows flexibility in color management choices a glitch or kludge is rewriting history from a big manufacturer's perspective.. Many programs still offer a real CM OFF choice for good reasons. Some are actually written to solve this issue on the Mac. Let's hope that PrinTao 8 solves it too. I tend to think that the independent writers consider their software users not as fools in the first place. The relation between big software manufacturers and software users is changing in other ways, could be another test whether users are in general fools or not.
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Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htmJuly 2013, 500+ inkjet media white spectral plots.
