Moving back on to the topic at hand... Here is the communication with Metro:
ME:
"Regarding colour management, all I am after is the ability to soft
proof so I am able to see what I am going to get, I assume that is the
same thing your lab technicians are doing, the only difference being I
want to have that control.
Could you elaborate on your statement? I'm aware of the inherent
differences between light and paper, and the differences in colour
gamuts - that I don't mind, but using correctly profiled ICC luts
should enable a pretty good interpretation, at least better than not.
Can you also tell me whether you print your black and White images on
black and White silver paper? I know many labs use colour chemistry
for b&w which results in colour shifts."
METRO:
"Yes you have the drift of it. Profiles are a guide and the reason why we are a bit careful giving them out is that some clients expect a perfect match to screen. In reality some colours don't reproduce 100% true because of the different mediums between screen and photographic dyes. I can supply profiles for our Lambda, Lightjet or Polielettronica.
We are the only lab in the UK to produce true Black and White prints from digital files. We use Harman Galerie FB Digital and RC papers. Harman will shortly be releasing a warm tone paper as well. We can produce these prints up to mural size. The Galerie Fibre paper is particularly beautiful with a very deep DMax. Monochrome files are worked up here to print and we don't offer profiles for Black and White images."