Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: perbjesse on August 19, 2019, 01:36:41 pm
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I am starting to make a B/W photo zine that I want to print using a commercial print house. I am doing my layout in InDesign, and I want it to be printed on a high quality digital printing press like the HP Indigo. My question is how to optimally set up for this kind of printing.
1) Pictures should generally be submitted in CMYK. Given that I want the best printing range possible, what is the preferred way to do this conversion for a pure B/W picture? Clearly to get the darkest black, you want to not just generate CMYK values with the K channel set.
2) When discussing with the first print house I have been in touch with, I asked for ICC profiles for their digital printing press. I was told to just use the GRaCOL2006 profile. This seems clumsy. Do print houses not profile their individual presses/printers?
3) What else should one think about when preparing high quality BW pictures for modern booklet printing? Since this is going to cost a bunch of money, I want to make sure I do the best work on my end to get the best result.
If there is a forum more suited to questions to do with fine art book/zine print preproduction, please feel free to refer me there. Any help much appreciated.
Kind regards,
-Per
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You are never going to achieve high quality clean bw with ANY cmyk digital press workflow that I have ever seen. All the books I’ve seen are greenish under daylight and yellowish red under tungsten if toned warm or blue or magenta in parts of the scale if left neutral, and ugly under any fluorescent light.
The irony about the HP Indigo press is that they do have a good solution for monochrome printing which replaces the color channels with gray dilutions. But none of the online shops I know of will take the trouble to set up a printer for that purpose. Many are advertising spot white color though.
Maybe I’m outdated and someone has set up for high end bw with a digital press for books and specialized in that, since I’ve looked into all this. It sure would be great and if you hear of one please let me know !
Right now the only quality books for monochrome being done that I’ve seen are duotone,tritone, or quadtone traditional offset.
I’m not aware of a website devoted to these digital press issues but I would love to know if there is. The Blurb type cmyk monochrome books if seen as well as all the ones people are using in China for University presses, etc are truly horrible. They try to tone them warm a lot of the time and thats even worse.
John
quote author=perbjesse link=topic=131802.msg1125700#msg1125700 date=1566236201]
I am starting to make a B/W photo zine that I want to print using a commercial print house. I am doing my layout in InDesign, and I want it to be printed on a high quality digital printing press like the HP Indigo. My question is how to optimally set up for this kind of printing.
1) Pictures should generally be submitted in CMYK. Given that I want the best printing range possible, what is the preferred way to do this conversion for a pure B/W picture? Clearly to get the darkest black, you want to not just generate CMYK values with the K channel set.
2) When discussing with the first print house I have been in touch with, I asked for ICC profiles for their digital printing press. I was told to just use the GRaCOL2006 profile. This seems clumsy. Do print houses not profile their individual presses/printers?
3) What else should one think about when preparing high quality BW pictures for modern booklet printing? Since this is going to cost a bunch of money, I want to make sure I do the best work on my end to get the best result.
If there is a forum more suited to questions to do with fine art book/zine print preproduction, please feel free to refer me there. Any help much appreciated.
Kind regards,
-Per
[/quote]
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You might want to contact
http://meridianprinting.com/services/printing/
https://brilliant-graphics.com/services/
Both these places have HP Indigos and it seems they can print B&W with monochrome ink sets.
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Thanks John. It seems like if anyone knows if it’s being done one of these two would know.
You might want to contact
http://meridianprinting.com/services/printing/
https://brilliant-graphics.com/services/
Both these places have HP Indigos and it seems they can print B&W with monochrome ink sets.
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Thanks John. You can always print BW on the indigo (or any other CMYK press) by just using the K channel. This does not give as deep blacks as using all channels, but it avoids any possibility of color casts. It would be interesting to see if any of these guys actually do something different. Do you have any pointers to some place where they discuss using more than one black ink in their flow?
You might want to contact
http://meridianprinting.com/services/printing/
https://brilliant-graphics.com/services/
Both these places have HP Indigos and it seems they can print B&W with monochrome ink sets.
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I am starting to make a B/W photo zine that I want to print using a commercial print house. I am doing my layout in InDesign, and I want it to be printed on a high quality digital printing press like the HP Indigo. My question is how to optimally set up for this kind of printing.
1) Pictures should generally be submitted in CMYK. Given that I want the best printing range possible, what is the preferred way to do this conversion for a pure B/W picture? Clearly to get the darkest black, you want to not just generate CMYK values with the K channel set.
2) When discussing with the first print house I have been in touch with, I asked for ICC profiles for their digital printing press. I was told to just use the GRaCOL2006 profile. This seems clumsy. Do print houses not profile their individual presses/printers?
3) What else should one think about when preparing high quality BW pictures for modern booklet printing? Since this is going to cost a bunch of money, I want to make sure I do the best work on my end to get the best result.
If there is a forum more suited to questions to do with fine art book/zine print preproduction, please feel free to refer me there. Any help much appreciated.
Kind regards,
-Per
1. Indigo will require CMYK of some flavor.
2. Don't expect neutral CMYK output from this device! Even with the very best ICC profiles (a ton of work), you will never see neutral color across the page due to the screening algorithms from HP. There will be a range from magenta to neutral to green with a noticeable pattern (seen if you were to output a full page with say Lstar 50 over it).
3. They probably told you to use GRaCOL2006 because their front end expects some tagged CMYK and might do a conversion to the 'native' CMYK using a device link profile or similar on the Indigo front end processor.
RUN a test of ONE book! Before you spend a lot on it; you may be unhappy with the neutrality of the output even if you decide to 'tone' the images (sepia as an example).
Edit: Actual monochrome printing on the Indigo (One black ink) IS possible but will look awful for photography!
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Thanks Andrew. So what are the options for printing a B/W photo zine with a run of 100 copies with good quality? I assume there are no places to do offset printing for a run that small? How do people solve this problem? I have invested a lot of time and effort into a good fine art printing flow, and I want something that is not awful for the zine.
It seems like some people do print with one ink on the indigo and have found that to work ok for photography. I am curious on your experience of it "looking awful".
Kind Regards,
-Per
1. Indigo will require CMYK of some flavor.
2. Don't expect neutral CMYK output from this device! Even with the very best ICC profiles (a ton of work), you will never see neutral color across the page due to the screening algorithms from HP. There will be a range from magenta to neutral to green with a noticeable pattern (seen if you were to output a full page with say Lstar 50 over it).
3. They probably told you to use GRaCOL2006 because their front end expects some tagged CMYK and might do a conversion to the 'native' CMYK using a device link profile or similar on the Indigo front end processor.
RUN a test of ONE book! Before you spend a lot on it; you may be unhappy with the neutrality of the output even if you decide to 'tone' the images (sepia as an example).
Edit: Actual monochrome printing on the Indigo (One black ink) IS possible but will look awful for photography!
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Thanks Andrew. So what are the options for printing a B/W photo zine with a run of 100 copies with good quality?
There are no options other than direct to press using Indigo, Xeikon, Nexpress and Indigo is the best of the lot. I'm just suggesting you put your expectations in line, run a test. Maybe tone the images. The Indigo with four or more inks can produce very nice output for a 'halftone' digital press. One ink? Not so much. And I wonder how many have actually had their service provider actually print true monochrome (one ink; black) which is fine if you're doing quick and dirty repro of text, or don't mind that newspaper look (albeit at a higher linescreen).
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Yes, one ink (black only) is no good. But some Indigo presses can print duotones and tritones, using black, gray, and light gray inks. Call the two sources I cited and ask them about this. From Meridian's website: "As with their offset presses, Meridian’s ability to print such lush black and white images as duo or tritones on their digital press is quite phenomenal." From Brilliant Graphics website: "These special books were printed digitally on our HP Indigo 12000, in tritones with a 4th hit of cyan to replicate the gold toned gelatin silver prints."
Also, from my experience having work printed by Mag Cloud (which is owned by Blurb), I can verify that using CMYK on these presses will not yield neutral B&W. And the image tone that you do get will vary from one print run to another.
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Yes, one ink (black only) is no good. But some Indigo presses can print duotones and tritones, using black, gray, and light gray inks. Call the two sources I cited and ask them about this. From Meridian's website: "As with their offset presses, Meridian’s ability to print such lush black and white images as duo or tritones on their digital press is quite phenomenal." From Brilliant Graphics website: "These special books were printed digitally on our HP Indigo 12000, in tritones with a 4th hit of cyan to replicate the gold toned gelatin silver prints."
Also, from my experience having work printed by Mag Cloud (which is owned by Blurb), I can verify that using CMYK on these presses will not yield neutral B&W. And the image tone that you do get will vary from one print run to another.
Yeah Blurb's output kind of sucks.... I've compared their output to those from Apple printers when Apple was doing this work; no comparison.
A hit of Cyan? I'm still worried about crossover and the issue with their screening algorithms, unless in the last few years, they really overhauled them (which they promised for a LONG time).
Lastly, a test is absolutely in order and at least one page should be nothing more than a middle gray; if it looks neutral over the entire page, HP fixed those issues. But without seeing this test, I remain colored a skeptic. Any printer who's going to accept a large sum of $$ should output a few unbound test pages. A color reference image or two, and certainly a solid gray that covers the entire page (ideally the entire sheet used).
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The Apple stuff use to be done by RR Donnelley — I know they still do similar stuff, but not sure if they do the zine-kind of thing you're looking for. But at least you know what kind of quality you'll (likely) get.
They've got an app for it in the store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/motif/id1404636482?mt=12
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The Apple stuff use to be done by RR Donnelley —
I don't know what gave you that idea, but it's not the case, not with all the photo products out of Aperture and iPhoto.
I know: I spent 3+ years color managing the sites printing all Apple books and photo products with an associate, all over the world. ;)
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Oh, crazy, I read an article where they claimed they were the place... it's how I found that app.
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Here's the article I got it from:
https://9to5mac.com/2018/07/31/apple-photo-printer-rr-donnelley-new-motif-app/
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Here's the article I got it from:
https://9to5mac.com/2018/07/31/apple-photo-printer-rr-donnelley-new-motif-app/ (https://9to5mac.com/2018/07/31/apple-photo-printer-rr-donnelley-new-motif-app/)
And it correctly states: Apple announced earlier this month that it would be discontinuing its photo printing service by September 30, 2018. This means that users will need to look at other third-party solutions.
So yeah, maybe that 3rd party stuff is going to them. But again, they absolutely didn't have anything to do with printing directly from the various Apple applications for books, cards, calendars etc.
This however is correct so I jumped too quickly to state they were not the provider as (CGX) indeed was:
"Donnelley has been the world’s largest commercial printer for years, and its Consolidated Graphics (CGX) division was said to be responsible for Apple’s printed products."
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They've got an app for it in the store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/motif/id1404636482?mt=12 (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/motif/id1404636482?mt=12)
Downloading now. Gotta send some special tests out, see if indeed they are maintaining the QC Apple demanded in the past. Good to know. I'm done with Blurb out of LR; not up to snuff.
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I'll be curious to hear what you think!
It's fascinating to know from someone who was behind-the-scenes on that.
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I’ve heard for years that it was possible to load the Indigo with a black and two or three grays, but that no one was commercially doing it, because “ there was no market big enough” to devote to it.
And it seemed to me at the time that that isn’t correct, surely someone could specialize in that and have a global market, but I never found one.
Maybe one of these guys are doing it now. But like Andrew says if they won’t send you proofs to evaluate I wouldn’t trust it. But if I were doing a project like that I’d be willing to pay for the preliminary tests if I were convinced they could do it.
It seems to me if a book publisher WAS into high-end bw on demand book publishing they would have samples to send to you before you get into testing your own material. I would also assume it would cost more than cmyk full color books.
John
Yes, one ink (black only) is no good. But some Indigo presses can print duotones and tritones, using black, gray, and light gray inks. Call the two sources I cited and ask them about this. From Meridian's website: "As with their offset presses, Meridian’s ability to print such lush black and white images as duo or tritones on their digital press is quite phenomenal." From Brilliant Graphics website: "These special books were printed digitally on our HP Indigo 12000, in tritones with a 4th hit of cyan to replicate the gold toned gelatin silver prints."
Also, from my experience having work printed by Mag Cloud (which is owned by Blurb), I can verify that using CMYK on these presses will not yield neutral B&W. And the image tone that you do get will vary from one print run to another.
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I have emails out to the two printers to see if they do printing with multiple greys, but have not heard back yet.
In the meantime: Is there anyone here that has personal experience of printing like this?
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Thanks Andrew. So what are the options for printing a B/W photo zine with a run of 100 copies with good quality? I assume there are no places to do offset printing for a run that small? How do people solve this problem? I have invested a lot of time and effort into a good fine art printing flow, and I want something that is not awful for the zine.
When I had this catalog (http://www.kasson.com/Blackstone/AloneInACrowd.pdf) printed, the run was a couple of hundred, as I remember. I used a local printer, and picked the inks for the offset duotone printing. It came out very well. The setup costs will be amortized over fewer copies if the run is only 100, but you might at least look into it.
I know several people who have had books offset printed in Hong Kong who had runs of about 100. I don't have any contact information, though. A disadvantage is that you can't be present to sign off on the press proofs, even if you buy an airplane ticket.
Hemlock printed a book for me once, but that run was 1000 copies, and the setup costs were a third of the per-book price even with that long a run.
Jim
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Your "Alone in a Crowd" edition is so good that it makes color seem irrelevant.
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Your "Alone in a Crowd" edition is so good that it makes color seem irrelevant.
+1. Wow!
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Your "Alone in a Crowd" edition is so good that it makes color seem irrelevant.
+1 also and a question. The cover photo does not have a caption but looks very much like the escalators in the Washington DC Metro system with the raised metal bumps to prevent ambitious folk from sliding down the center of the escalator. Is this a photo of one of the stops and if so which one? I'm guessing maybe Dupont Circle.
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Your "Alone in a Crowd" edition is so good that it makes color seem irrelevant.
Thank you very much.
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+1 also and a question. The cover photo does not have a caption but looks very much like the escalators in the Washington DC Metro system with the raised metal bumps to prevent ambitious folk from sliding down the center of the escalator. Is this a photo of one of the stops and if so which one? I'm guessing maybe Dupont Circle.
You are correct. It is Dupont Circle. Take a look at page 38.
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I’ve heard for years that it was possible to load the Indigo with a black and two or three grays, but that no one was commercially doing it, because “ there was no market big enough” to devote to it.
And it seemed to me at the time that that isn’t correct, surely someone could specialize in that and have a global market, but I never found one.
Maybe one of these guys are doing it now. But like Andrew says if they won’t send you proofs to evaluate I wouldn’t trust it. But if I were doing a project like that I’d be willing to pay for the preliminary tests if I were convinced they could do it.
It seems to me if a book publisher WAS into high-end bw on demand book publishing they would have samples to send to you before you get into testing your own material. I would also assume it would cost more than cmyk full color books.
John
One of the problems is that Indigo print shops have contracts with for example Blurb and they have to comply to a certain print standard as Blurb wants the printing all over the world to be the same. For example this company has facilities in the EU and US and I have it from first hand that a B&W solution does not fit their goals for that reason. If you can persuade Blurb there is more chance than by going to the printers themselves. If Blurb etc asks for a quality like that and promises enough volume for the printers they will install an Indigo for that task readily. Which would contribute a lot to to our culture in my opinion. Bringing back the quality of intaglio sheet fed or offset duo tone B&W printing for small runs would be wonderful. Sometimes I buy photo books of the 50's made with rotogravure and they can already have a very nice quality.
This publisher goes a long way in creating books, duotone included:
https://mackbooks.co.uk/products/the-model-br-torbjorn-rodland
They asked me to measure the offset papers too for OBA content and to get near the inkjet paper white as used by some of their photographer clients.
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
March 2017 update, 750+ inkjet media white spectral plots
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You are so right and all Blurb would have to do is support one or two shops to just specialize in that.
I’m shocked someone hasn’t done it. Imagine what could be done with quadtone etc and it would be So much easier and faster than offset with outstanding quality and at a price point that offset couldn’t offer.
One of the problems is that Indigo print shops have contracts with for example Blurb and they have to comply to a certain print standard as Blurb wants the printing all over the world to be the same. For example this company has facilities in the EU and US and I have it from first hand that a B&W solution does not fit their goals for that reason. If you can persuade Blurb there is more chance than by going to the printers themselves. If Blurb etc asks for a quality like that and promises enough volume for the printers they will install an Indigo for that task readily. Which would contribute a lot to to our culture in my opinion. Bringing back the quality of intaglio sheet fed or offset duo tone B&W printing for small runs would be wonderful. Sometimes I buy photo books of the 50's made with rotogravure and they can already have a very nice quality.
This publisher goes a long way in creating books, duotone included:
https://mackbooks.co.uk/products/the-model-br-torbjorn-rodland
They asked me to measure the offset papers too for OBA content and to get near the inkjet paper white as used by some of their photographer clients.
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst
http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
March 2017 update, 750+ inkjet media white spectral plots
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Hi Per
It's been some years since I worked pre-press in digital or litho but a couple of possible options:
For digital (Indigo) create a CMYK range of 30c, 20m, 20y, 90k. A little trial and error to get neutral grey. And check the printers workflow doesn't force the colours back to more conventional proportions.
Litho 2 (or 3) spot colours Black and 1 or 2 greys might not be that much different in cost to digital for 100 copies of multi page A4(?). The real issue is finding a printer that this type of work suits the equipment they use. Most will have a 4 or 5 colour press and will charge accordingly even if only 2 colours, some smaller printers may have a 2 colour press (and nearly half the price).
Relatively few commercial print shops will have ICC profiles for their presses, digital or litho.
Try to talk to a couple of printers or pre-press people about what you are trying to achieve. If you can find someone who understands the problem you are part way to the solution.
Good luck with the project
Gerald
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For digital (Indigo) create a CMYK range of 30c, 20m, 20y, 90k.
Using (one) of my Indigo profiles, that is pretty neutral: Lab values 17/1/0, RGB (ProPhoto): 31/31/30.
Other profiles????
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Thanks Gerald for the informative answer! Just what I was looking for.
Questions:
1) I assume that what you are proposing is to map grey values to CMYK with maximum black having the value you suggest. When printing B/W using quadtone rip I create curves for each color (black, two greys, cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta, yellow) that does a complex mapping of the grey value to particular values for the eight inks. What kind of mapping would you suggest here? How would you do this mapping in photoshop?
2) The idea to talk to prepress people about this kind of stuff is a really good one. Where would one find a forum to discuss something like this? Where do those guys hang out?
Regards,
-Per
Hi Per
It's been some years since I worked pre-press in digital or litho but a couple of possible options:
For digital (Indigo) create a CMYK range of 30c, 20m, 20y, 90k. A little trial and error to get neutral grey. And check the printers workflow doesn't force the colours back to more conventional proportions.
Litho 2 (or 3) spot colours Black and 1 or 2 greys might not be that much different in cost to digital for 100 copies of multi page A4(?). The real issue is finding a printer that this type of work suits the equipment they use. Most will have a 4 or 5 colour press and will charge accordingly even if only 2 colours, some smaller printers may have a 2 colour press (and nearly half the price).
Relatively few commercial print shops will have ICC profiles for their presses, digital or litho.
Try to talk to a couple of printers or pre-press people about what you are trying to achieve. If you can find someone who understands the problem you are part way to the solution.
Good luck with the project
Gerald
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You might want to contact
http://meridianprinting.com/services/printing/
https://brilliant-graphics.com/services/
Both these places have HP Indigos and it seems they can print B&W with monochrome ink sets.
I've had a number of offset book printed in various parts of the world, got a quote from Meridian, and let's just say I thought it was a typo. They are insanely expensive. For that matter all offset printing in the USA is very very expensive compared to even very high labor cost European countries (Germany, Italy, great printers with very latest UV Heidelberg presses). Asked many people why this is, everybody agrees, nobody has an answer.
Of course the gap is even bigger when it comes to Asia vs USA.
But maybe you are privately wealthy and none of this matters!
This is for offset, ymmv for Indigo.
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I was wondering....if the printing service does not provide an icc profile, could one not be made by sending out a target file to print, then creating a profile with the respective spectrophotometer from the resulting print. Then before sending out an image to print, do a Convert to Profile with that profile? Am I missing something?
:Niranjan.
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I was wondering....if the printing service does not provide an icc profile, could one not be made by sending out a target file to print, then creating a profile with the respective spectrophotometer from the resulting print. Then before sending out an image to print, do a Convert to Profile with that profile? Am I missing something?
:Niranjan.
All depends on process control. If the target printed today for a profile, and one printed a week later have an average deltaE of 7, well that's not good. You can't profile a moving target.... ;D
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All depends on process control. If the target printed today for a profile, and one printed a week later have an average deltaE of 7, well that's not good. You can't profile a moving target.... ;D
When I did Staccato, Hemlock Press told me they calibrated their presses to GRACoL2006. I found a GRACoL2006 ICC profile that I thought fit the paper I was using, but I was unable to find one with the UV coating that was a 5th "ink" in the process I selected (a 6th was a spot color that I used for some of the text). I found that the profile lay entirely within the gamut of the Epson 4900 with Exhibition Fiber that I was using for hard proofing. I mapped the image colors to lie within the GRACoL2006 gamut, and converted the images to GRACoL2006 and back to working RGB to make sure. Then I proofed them on the Epson 4900. Then I asked Hemlock for proofs of some of the images. My Epson proofs weren't an exact match for the real offset proofs, but they were close enough that I felt reasonably confident in my editing of the images for the book. I was unable to attend the press run, but I sent a photographer whose eyes I trust to supervise the on-press tweaks.
I was happy with the way the book came out. Of course, the images aren't as good as the inkjet exhibition prints from the series.
Jim
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Hi Per
I'm just catching up again.
I don't know where you are based, but are you thinking about printing locally? If so try sending the job spec out and see what sort of response you get back, you might get lucky and get a relevant conversation going. Or do you know anyone in graphic design that works regularly with local printers. Some companies will only deal with very straightforward / undemanding CMYK work and just churn out volume. Ideally you want a company that is able to deal with custom colours and has the understanding of their own workflow software to control specialised workflow.
As you are familiar with photo inkjet printing and RIPs then you appreciate the secret sauce that each printer manufacturer puts into their workflow, the workflow and software within litho prepress is just as convoluted (if not more so). Any solution offered by one person may not hold true for the final print company.
I have just had a quick look and found https://printplanet.com with a wide range of forums.
A quick look for "speciality BW book printers" yielded a selection of book publishers (and many others). Their are a lot of independent publishers and printers offering short run book printing. A bit of digital leg work should give you an idea of quality levels if they are showing off their customers work.
Even a trawl through local library or book shop at niche B&W work might give you some ideas for printers.
Get samples if possible and even spend a bit on a test print before committing could save a lot of stress.
Hope this helps more than confuses!
Gerald
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Hi Per
I'm just catching up again.
I don't know where you are based, but are you thinking about printing locally? If so try sending the job spec out and see what sort of response you get back, you might get lucky and get a relevant conversation going. Or do you know anyone in graphic design that works regularly with local printers. Some companies will only deal with very straightforward / undemanding CMYK work and just churn out volume. Ideally you want a company that is able to deal with custom colours and has the understanding of their own workflow software to control specialised workflow.
As you are familiar with photo inkjet printing and RIPs then you appreciate the secret sauce that each printer manufacturer puts into their workflow, the workflow and software within litho prepress is just as convoluted (if not more so). Any solution offered by one person may not hold true for the final print company.
I have just had a quick look and found https://printplanet.com with a wide range of forums.
A quick look for "speciality BW book printers" yielded a selection of book publishers (and many others). Their are a lot of independent publishers and printers offering short run book printing. A bit of digital leg work should give you an idea of quality levels if they are showing off their customers work.
Even a trawl through local library or book shop at niche B&W work might give you some ideas for printers.
Get samples if possible and even spend a bit on a test print before committing could save a lot of stress.
Hope this helps more than confuses!
Gerald
Thanks Gerald. I will follow your suggestions and do some legwork.