Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: texshooter on January 24, 2025, 09:13:33 pm
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Does Canon printers have an ABW like Epson does?
Does Canon's B&W mode only use the black and gray inks like Epson does?
Does Canon's B&W mode have same limitations as Epson, namely the inability to use paper profiles or do split toning?
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Does Canon printers have an ABW like Epson does?
Does Canon's B&W mode only use the black and gray inks like Epson does?
Does Canon's B&W mode have same limitations as Epson, namely the inability to use paper profiles or do split toning?
Yes
Yes
No, it can do split toning
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Epson ABW does not only use black a grey ink, lets start there.
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Dan-- I really think it's time you invest in a RIP-- the amount of effort you are putting into things that would be easily solved (or at least solvable) by having a program with true full control over your machines would be a gamechanger for you IMO. Take a look at mirage, it's really got a great interface and isn't insanely expensive or complicated like some of the other options out there.
I've made a fantastic approximation of Epson's ABW mode on a canon in Ergosoft-- basically ABW limits the printer to using all the black inks, and then eliminates all other colors except for light magenta, light cyan, and yellow, and it limits the ink outputs on these 3 color channels pretty dramatically-- this gives it the ability to still tone prints subtly without the color shifting so drastically with small moves made in PS or whatever image processing program you use (or in the ABW driver itself).
For the vast majority of black and white prints I run on my ipf9400s I still use RGB profiles-- I make them thru i1profiler, and the results are really quite good, but the manual "faux ABW" mode is on another level.
Color management really is an incredibly deep and complex topic, but it can be very interesting, and even fun once you get past the mental image of these machines having any kind of intelligence as to what it is they're doing when producing a pleasing image on paper. The printer manufacturers have long touted their products as being "just hit print" devices, but the amount of effort in engineering to get them even somewhat close to that point is immense. But also what it boils down to in the end is a pretty simple concept-- we've got a bunch of hoses containing different colors of ink turning on and off at different times in an attempt to create a huge range of colors out of a comparatively small sample set. The journey from concept to execution is where all the magic (and all the hassle) happens.
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I was ready to pull the plug on a canon printer but based on things i've heard from many users I abandoned that plan
I miss my Z3200 printer, there does not seem to be anything close to what I used to get from my Z3200
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I was ready to pull the plug on a canon printer but based on things i've heard from many users I abandoned that plan
I miss my Z3200 printer, there does not seem to be anything close to what I used to get from my Z3200
There isn’t anything wrong with Canon printers (I’ve had experience of quite a few), they make beautiful prints. The problem here is with Apple who once again have screwed up the ‘application manages colour’ colour managed pipeline.
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The heck with black and White. I cannot get a decent color print out of it (P4600) after 3 months.
The color is all over the place and I do mean that. Printer manages Color is the only way to get it close.
1) Did you try Canon Professional Print and Layout software? It prints directly omitting driver color management (which can be erratic in MacOS)
2) If Canon PP&L will get proper results try Mirage Print (there's 14 day trial) from dinax.com
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There are two black & white modes on Canon ImagePROGRAF printers. The first is the "Black & White" button in the printing app. That does *not* work like the Epson. It more or less just desaturates the image and prints with black and color inks in order to approximate neutral. If you look at it under a loupe you can see blue and yellow dots mixed in.
On the newest printers including the 1100 (and maybe the 2600/4600) there are also special B&W media types you can install via the Canon Media Configuration Tool. If you use one of these profiles the printer *will* only use black and grey inks but the Canon inks are closer to sepia tone and neutral, so this is only an option if that's what you want. Also, because there are fewer channels of ink the dot placement is a bit more gritty and less smooth than mixing in color inks, although that's subjective and could just be my imagination.
If you really really only want black and grey inks, I would look into buying an old Epson and using Piezography but that's an expensive and high maintenance direction to go in.
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So if Canon's ABW mode can do split toning, then why the hell can't Epson?
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Because Epson's is an actual "only use black inks" mode that can only be the same tone as the inks while Canon's is a "help someone make a black & white image and print with all the inks" mode which allows for any control you'd have in Photoshop. If Canon's worked the same as Epson then you'd only get sepia because that's the actual tlone of the grey inks.
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Epson's ABW mode does not use just black inks. As I said in my post above it's the black inks, plus light cyan, light magenta, and yellow. These extra colors are limited pretty low, but they allow for the toning options available in the ABW driver-- it's not SPLIT toning, it's just across the board warm/cool. If you use whatever the utility is that shows ink usage, you'll see how much of these colors are used to influence the tone. IME the older K3 Epson blacks were very green, and the newer ultrachrome ones had a warmish tone iirc. The only true way to print on an Epson with ONLY black ink is to use a RIP (or gutenprint/gimp print), although I did find through some extensive testing once that some of the super low quality draft modes for plain paper/bond paper would not introduce color into the blacks-- I think this was on a 9900 converted to dye sub I was working with ages ago.
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I still say that if Canon's ABW mode can do split toning, then so should Epson be able to. I don't care how Epson does it, JUST DO IT!
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I still say that if Canon's ABW mode can do split toning, then so should Epson be able to. I don't care how Epson does it, JUST DO IT!
It can't and it will not. Use the other Epson print driver.
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I still say that if Canon's ABW mode can do split toning, then so should Epson be able to. I don't care how Epson does it, JUST DO IT!
All the tools are out there in the world for you to be able to make your printer do this yourself. A printer is a tool, like a wrench, it's up to you to use it to create what you want.
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So which of these printers gives the highest quality black and white prints with split toning ?
1. Canon - Advanced B&W Mode with split toning enabled
or
2. Epson - Normal color mode (since ABW mode can't do split toning)
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I'd say that's going to depend on the image, the specific model, the paper, and the split tone. So there's no single answer.
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This may not be a place you want to go, but I do my split toning using LRC or PS/ACR using the Colour Grading tool after converting to B&W in the basic settings. The Colour Grading tool has 3 colour wheels, one each for high, mids and lows. I then print in colour of course.
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Although I like that Canon can do split toning whilst in ABW mode (although I haven't been able to find documentation to prove this claim), I'm leaning towards Epson for their new Carbon Black Mode. Having a greater Dmax is more important to me than split toning, particularly for studio portraits with solid black backgrounds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIEMS7pwFow (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIEMS7pwFow)
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I use the Nik Silver Efex Pro 3 and use the number 3 split toning selection in the finishing section for sepia in the highlights and selenium in the darker areas. I put in a black and white layer below this and then adjust the blending opacity to my liking for an individual image. What I like about this is that it is repeatable. I am partially color blind so trying to adjust colors with sliders can be hit or miss. There is whole range of toning options there, some more or less to my liking than the sepia/selenium.
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1) Did you try Canon Professional Print and Layout software? It prints directly omitting driver color management (which can be erratic in MacOS)
2) If Canon PP&L will get proper results try Mirage Print (there's 14 day trial) from dinax.com
I downloaded the trial version of Mirage Print and I have to say it seems very good. Not sure what the secret sauce is but it does generate consistent images that have a nice amount of saturation and contrast while providing accurate colors even when using the icc profiles from Canon and Canson on my Canon P4600. As a point of comparison, I also own ImagePrint Black and I find that I like the look of the prints from Mirage Print much better. I have not had a chance to test my own profiles with it but so far it seems like a very good product. It does have a nice streamlined user interface that helps eliminate many potential printing problems. Definitely worth exploring further.
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Lightroom = good Split toning on all the brands.
quote author=Lessbones link=topic=144372.msg1263508#msg1263508 date=1737828494]
Dan-- I really think it's time you invest in a RIP-- the amount of effort you are putting into things that would be easily solved (or at least solvable) by having a program with true full control over your machines would be a gamechanger for you IMO. Take a look at mirage, it's really got a great interface and isn't insanely expensive or complicated like some of the other options out there.
I've made a fantastic approximation of Epson's ABW mode on a canon in Ergosoft-- basically ABW limits the printer to using all the black inks, and then eliminates all other colors except for light magenta, light cyan, and yellow, and it limits the ink outputs on these 3 color channels pretty dramatically-- this gives it the ability to still tone prints subtly without the color shifting so drastically with small moves made in PS or whatever image processing program you use (or in the ABW driver itself).
For the vast majority of black and white prints I run on my ipf9400s I still use RGB profiles-- I make them thru i1profiler, and the results are really quite good, but the manual "faux ABW" mode is on another level.
Color management really is an incredibly deep and complex topic, but it can be very interesting, and even fun once you get past the mental image of these machines having any kind of intelligence as to what it is they're doing when producing a pleasing image on paper. The printer manufacturers have long touted their products as being "just hit print" devices, but the amount of effort in engineering to get them even somewhat close to that point is immense. But also what it boils down to in the end is a pretty simple concept-- we've got a bunch of hoses containing different colors of ink turning on and off at different times in an attempt to create a huge range of colors out of a comparatively small sample set. The journey from concept to execution is where all the magic (and all the hassle) happens.
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