Using the normal, colour managed printing workflow is what I do. Works well. I make my edits in PS, create a duplicate, soft proof the original against the duplicate, make any necessary adjustments on new adjustment layers, create a group for those printing adjustment layers and name it so I know what it is (i.e., Eps3800 USFAP 1440 RelCol would be Ultrasmooth Fine Art at 1440 dpi using a Relative Colorimetric intent on an Epson 3800), then print it. Turn off printer colour management, select my paper, quality level in the printer driver, select my profile in the PS print dialogue and fire it off.
Eric Chan has created several
paper profiles to be used with ABW for both Epson and non-Epson papers. Epson's claim when they first announced ABW was that we no longer needed to use profiles to get neutral, good quality b&w prints. Might work for Epson papers (might). But doesn't work so well with non-Epson papers. If you've got to go through the process of using profiles anyway, I don't really see a benefit to ABW mode. I get neutral b&w prints using the normal workflow. I know Eric indicates he gets a deeper black using ABW. I haven't measured mine (don't have a densitometer), but to my eye, I don't see a difference. There's the other issue. In order to get the most out of ABW, since we can't soft proof, you need to make or have made a custom adjustment curve for each paper. A lot of folks don't have the hardware tools necessary to do this. That means it's trial and error - print, adjust, print, adjust, print, adjust and so on. If I want to tone a b&w print, I've got more control doing it using the regular workflow than trying to do it in ABW. Particulary since you can't see the effect of toning (or any ABW adjustment) on your own image but only the Gorman image. Another claim Epson made when ABW came out was that you could send a colour image through ABW and presto-changeo-magico you'd get a beautiful b&w print. In my own testing (for what that's worth), it appears to me that what the ABW driver is doing is something akin to a standard 'Desaturate' which, as we know, doesn't often produce a terrific b&w image. I think when ABW was introduced, folks who'd been frustrated with b&w printing in previous Epson printers were hoping it would be a viable alternative to, for example, QuadTone RIP. QTR is still better (in my view) and the process of creating b&w prints through the normal workflow has improved so ABW just doesn't seem as useful as it might otherwise be.