Black & White prints, Canon and Xrite

[MT]

Hi,

every time I print black and white photography, I stumble a bit at choosing color management.

I have Canon pro 4000, and i1Studio from Xrite. I make custom color profiles on all media that I use. Profile my screens at 2 months invervals.
Color printing - on point, I got to the point when I always get output the way I wanted it.


But B/W... I like to use Canon Professional Print and Layout, as plugin to Photoshop.

What's "best", "professional" way to handle color management?

1) When I use custom profile for paper, that I made using standard calibration, blacks are a bit off. I'm very nitpicking, so its a minor difference, but I see it and I dont accept that.
2) When I use custom profile for paper, that I made using B/W calibration from i1Studio, it gets better, but not for all photographies.
3) When I select "B/W" print in color management, what I see on screen is extremely close to output. Like a very very close, more than option 1, a tad better than option 2.

How is that possible?
By selecting option "B/W" in color management, paper icc greys out. So I assume at that point, printer doesnt account for individual papers characteristics.
How does printer know how blacks and greys will translate to paper?

A lot of customers send me their "black and white" photographies, but they are not really greyscale, but RGB, and there is a lot of magentas and yellows - does this affect options 1 and 2 individually?


Whats the use of those custom .icc that are made for BW (test patches are different, so it does look at different stuff).


I would love some of your thoughts on the matter.

[digitaldog]

If this is similar to how Epson produces B&W, IMHO, the best way is to let the proprietary driver produce it rather than with ICC profiles and color management. At least using Epson's Advanced  B&W, you can get dead nuts neutral prints, using less inks! And you can tone them too. Does the Canon have a similar proprietary B&W process?

[MT]

Does the Canon have a similar proprietary B&W process?

There are few options in that mode, and I can get really good results with it - but I cant understand how it works.

I use a lot of custom media (Hahnemuhle, Canson) and OEM Canon, and on all of them this B/W print looks good - so how does printer "know" what dmax and other characteristics of individual media are?

[digitaldog]

I don't understand how the Epson Advanced B&W actually works either, it's proprietary. But it does what I want, when I want a neutral print, san's any apparent metameric failure, using less inks and making the print more archival. Epson's approach is a black box, but it works really well.

[Ryan Mack]

Unfortunately I don't think you'll find any way to get the Canon to be as effective as the Epson at B&W. Epson's inks are actually pretty damn neutral, so their AB&W actually reduces the amount of color ink added and mostly focuses on linearizing your output so you have the most flexibility in your density. Canon's grey inks aren't neutral. You have to mix in colors to make them neutral, and it's imperfect and subject to metameric failure. I've used the Canon's drivers and the ImagePrint Black Canon B&W driver and they both suffer the same issues, although the color tints may be in slightly different directions in different density ranges. The only good news is that so far nobody I've sold a B&W print to has ever noticed, and my wife's B&W print entries into the local camera club competitions do quite well all the same. The best advice I can give is to do your own profile generation on your specific paper and for your specific intended lighting to get it as neutral as possible, then just print and reprint until you get the density the way you like it. If I actually did a lot of printing these days I'm tempted to try to restore my old 3880 and maybe switch it over to Piezography.

[Ernst Dinkla]

Unfortunately I don't think you'll find any way to get the Canon to be as effective as the Epson at B&W. Epson's inks are actually pretty damn neutral, so their AB&W actually reduces the amount of color ink added and mostly focuses on linearizing your output so you have the most flexibility in your density. Canon's grey inks aren't neutral. You have to mix in colors to make them neutral, and it's imperfect and subject to metameric failure. I've used the Canon's drivers and the ImagePrint Black Canon B&W driver and they both suffer the same issues, although the color tints may be in slightly different directions in different density ranges. The only good news is that so far nobody I've sold a B&W print to has ever noticed, and my wife's B&W print entries into the local camera club competitions do quite well all the same. The best advice I can give is to do your own profile generation on your specific paper and for your specific intended lighting to get it as neutral as possible, then just print and reprint until you get the density the way you like it. If I actually did a lot of printing these days I'm tempted to try to restore my old 3880 and maybe switch it over to Piezography.

In the past the HP Vivera pigment inks PK, Grey, Light Gray, were the only neutral inks, the MK black pigment still warm though. If the Epson B&W inks have that property now as well you should use a microscope to make sure there is no color ink added to neutralize a B&W print that is made with the B&W mode of the driver. That is the way I verified it for the HP's a decade ago. There are different pros and cons for each approach.

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst Dinkla

https://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." H. L. Mencken

[MT]

Unfortunately I don't think you'll find any way to get the Canon to be as effective as the Epson at B&W. E

I think we missed a point there a bit, Im not unsatisfied with my prints, I want to learn and understand what's behind the B/W mode, and why and when would it be better to use B/W mode instead of custom .icc profile made for blacks?

If I select B/W mode, printer doesnt care for .icc, so how does it perform good prints back to back, on different papers, if those papers have different surfaces and/or manufacturers?

Is a photo that someone calls "BW", but its in RGB and there is actually a bit of color in it, better at custom icc for blacks, or should it be icc for color prints?

Those are things I would like to discuss

[Ryan Mack]

On Canon, I do not believe the B&W mode does anything other than remove any color in the input image. It does not seem to affect the ink mixing in any other way. You are welcome to use a normal color profile (ideally with extra swatches for neutral and near-neutral colors) with a colorless image and you should get the exact same result whether you use the "force b&w" checkbox or not.

[David Sutton]

I can't speak for the Pro 4000, but I assume it is similar to my Canon printer.
When selecting monochrome in the printer dialogue, there is always a small amount of colour added, but not enough to give a colour cast.
The issue I have with printing a B&W image in colour mode using a custom .icc profile made for blacks is that I often get a slight a colour cast, usually in the shadows. It's a bit random.
The issue I have with using the monochrome setting in the printer dialogue is I lose the ability to print from LR using a custom .icc profile to softproof, and also the prints come out too dark. NOT an issue with the icc profile itself or with the monitor settings.
My solution is to use the free part of Quadtonerip to create a custom icc profile and convert the image colour space to QTR-Greylab.
I made a brief summary here.
I can then softproof in LR and get tonal separation right down to 1 on a stepwedge.

[unesco]

Unfortunately I don't think you'll find any way to get the Canon to be as effective as the Epson at B&W. Epson's inks are actually pretty damn neutral, so their AB&W actually reduces the amount of color ink added and mostly focuses on linearizing your output so you have the most flexibility in your density. Canon's grey inks aren't neutral. You have to mix in colors to make them neutral, and it's imperfect and subject to metameric failure. (...)

I think, it is opposite. HP and Canon have neutral black/grey inks, while Epson is far from neutrality. HP and Canon inks have addition of other pigments/dyes in the carbon inks themselves while Epson mixes other colors directly on paper. Epson K,LK and LLK inks have olive/mustard tint - measured with spectro and observed with microscope.

[Ryan Mack]

I think, it is opposite. HP and Canon have neutral black/grey inks, while Epson is far from neutrality. HP and Canon inks have addition of other pigments/dyes in the carbon inks themselves while Epson mixes other colors directly on paper. Epson K,LK and LLK inks have olive/mustard tint - measured with spectro and observed with microscope.

Hmm, interesting. Yeah it certainly could be that the ink is more neutral but Canon still uses more colored ink in order to smooth the gradation or some other reason. I certainly see more colored ink spots when I look at a print from my Canon 4000 than my Epson 3880 under a loupe.

[Doug Gray]

See this discussion. Mostly for Epson ABW but also Canon Pro1000 B&W
B&W printing and profile creation.

https://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=132251.0

Program for creating ICC profiles that work for both soft proofing and printing B&W. See the readme file for a deep dive into how well B&W works compared to printing B&W in standard color mode.

https://github.com/doug3236/ABWProfilePatches