Setting a black point

[David Sutton]

I am wondering what others here are doing with their black point when printing.
I have always sought to get some good black and the highest white I can manage and still be laying down ink. But I realise that this is not the way I see. I hardly ever see a true black in nature. There are always reflections or some other effect that "lightens the darks". Looking out my window right now all the whites I can see not only have no detail but have a colour contamination.
So I thought I'd spend a year or so reducing the dynamic range of my B&W prints, especially on matte paper. I like what I see so far printed on HP Matte Litho-realistic on an ipf 6300. The untoned version has a definite but not unpleasant blue cast due to the substrate.
The most difficult thing has been setting my black point. I print a page of density patches (0 to 34 and then 226 to 255) and for most papers there is no detail below 7. That means the file has to have no blacks under say 9 to give me some processing leeway. And if I'm going to tone then I have to get the black level up to about 11 before processing. Harder than I imagined when there is a full dynamic range. Here's my first go, but I think I push this much further:

[Ernst Dinkla]

David,

More questions raised in this reply than solutions I'm afraid.

If you start from a calibrated + profiled printer/media combination the shadows should show detail. That can be done for both Color and B&Win resp Color and B&W driver mode. The decision where to start and end the dynamic range of an image (in a B&W print) remains a subjective choice, a matter of taste, but creating the basics for that choice is in calibration and profiling. Editing in soft proof mode is the other advantage then.

That said we also have display conditions that can influence what is still visible of shadow detail. Display lighting, framing behind glass both influence the ideal dynamic range that has been created with instruments measuring with consistent light on a bare target print.

Reading more information on Black Point Compensation in color management (and how Perceptual handles that too) I wonder whether that could be improved with better algorithms for B&W. More perceptually correct on for example printer/media combinations with a low dynamic range. I get the impression that BPC or Perceptual compresses the shadows too much. Editing on the soft proofing should help but it is still a representation not the print. I recall some discussions in the Digital B&W Printing forum at Yahoo where tweaked curves for different paper/printer combinations proved to be more satisfying.

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
December 2014 update, 700+ inkjet media white spectral plots

[Paul Roark]

How I deal with the black point depends of my goals for the print and what style I'm interested it.  For most of my B&W printing, I want as deep a black as possible.  Without color, that one linear grayscale is all we have to separate the subject matters in the print.  So, the better the dynamic range of the print, the more effective we can be at that task.  (Plus, of course, selective contrast increases are standard practice.)  (Note also that subtle split toning can slightly increase the perceived range of the print.)

That said, I'm currently printing for an artist who uses pencil on Arches watercolor paper.  There, we don't come close to using the dmax of the printing system.  We want the print to look like his pencil drawings, not (heaven forbid) a "pen" drawing.

However, for most of my printing, matching the look of nature is not the goal.  Without color "representational" prints are not really our strong suit.  I'm interested in prints that have high impact, and for that I usually need the deep blacks.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com

[David Sutton]

Ernst, the questions are usually more interesting than the solutions. I agree with you on BPC and Perceptual.
I think custom curves may be something I will try. I should be getting slightly deeper blacks from my density patches than  7 to 8, even with canned profiles, but on the other hand I don't want to go down the route of doing my own profiles with top of the line gear at present. For the odd time I use a paper like HP Matte Litho, the Spyder 3 Print is making a significant difference.
Looking at the prints from the above image, they have an airy feel without losing a sense of depth. One of the challenges with B&W is to make the print sing, and I think one aspect of that is to manage the placement of contrast, and the relationship between the tones as much as managing the total range of tones. I've never forgotten holding in my hands prints by Frank Hurley and Herbert Ponting. Matte paper, fairly low dynamic range, but their impact was amazing.

[Some Guy]

I was playing with the K7 Selenium and had a nice tonal range of 21 steps and linear.  Based it on Jon Cones #2 paper in QTR and I added a bit more PK black.

Problem is it solarized badly in the final print.  The deepest blacks took on a talc powder looking color rather than black so I assume it is a solarization effect.  Applying G.O. overcoating did not help it either.  Just a very chalky black.  Switched to MK from PK and same thing.  No difference, just a chalky dark black.

I found if I pull the black density up a bit, it begins to print normally, just not a deep black anymore.  Paper was Kozo Natural (A cream yellow.) 70gm from Hiromi.

At some point making black deep seems to lead to other problems.  A nice linear step range doesn't lead to a nice print.  Probably best to determine where the optimum black can be on a paper, and then linearize from there else it might solarize, chalk-up, or reverse.  Can't tell from a step wedge as it looks good, but a print really shows something went wrong.

SG

[JRSmit]

The first thing to do is to calibrate your printer-paper combination before profiling. With calibration i mean finding and recording optimum printer settings like the mediatype, ink density etc. Your Solarisation issue is simply the artefact of gross over-inking, for instance caused by a wrong media-type for given paper. And yes a step-wedge measurement should show this, but note: 21 step grey step-wedge is too coarse. No profiling will resolve this. How to find an optimum calibration is up to you, but for me it is 80% of the work of getting the best possible print result on given paper.
Profiling then is just a rather dumb tedious piece of work.

[David Sutton]

SG: I have a printing density patch page you can download at http://davidsutton.co.nz/psnz/
for whites and blacks on a 0-255 scale with an appropriate background to see differences. I'll leave it up for a month or so.
David

[Some Guy]

SG: I have a printing density patch page you can download at http://davidsutton.co.nz/psnz/
for whites and blacks on a 0-255 scale with an appropriate background to see differences. I'll leave it up for a month or so.
David

Thanks.  Played a bit with it in QTR with K7 Selenium.

What I got was a black #0, but 1 through 13 are a lighter shade of gray (They do graduate lighter, just too light compared to #0), and then 14 is much darker black and it graduates lighter to #34 as it should.

I don't know why #1-#13 is so light (Solarized?  but I would expect #0 to be as well?) but #0 is definitely black, and #14 seems like it should follow #0.  Plus, I tried various profiles in QTR (Just attached an image of a couple of different profiles) and they all seem similar in output too so it seems profiles aren't the issue.  Maybe a tank is mixed up or a nozzle is not firing well for #1-#13.

Ugh!

The lighter shades off #226 to #255 look great though.

I see some are having issues with solarization in the Yahoo! groups QTR forum too.  Wonder if an ink batch is bad or mislabeled?

SG