Blurb book B&W created from within LR (5.4)

[bns]

I recently created a Blurb book from within LR (5.4) containing exclusively B&W images. The images in the digital preview (http://nl.blurb.com/b/5325271-in-perspectief) are absolutely neutral including the cover photo. No color mixed in whatsoever.
The first print (printed within the Netherlands I presume) had a clear blue color cast on the cover, and the inside images had various degrees of greenish/yellowish cast. After sending color measurements and photos of pages back to blurb a second print was made. The cover was better, inside pages were different, but not OK.

Now the advice I received from Blurb is:

"However, even though the color cast has improved with a reprint of the book as-is, I recommend adjusting your black and white images by following the instructions here:
http://www.blurb.com/guides/color_management/prep_bw_pdf
In order for our printer to minimize the chance of a shift in color to show in print, we recommend removing all color from all black and white images."

To me this does not seem to make much sense if the book is to be generated straight from within Lightroom (which in itself works quite conveniently).
Any comments or suggestions will be highly appreciated.

Boudewijn Swanenburg

[digitaldog]

The images from LR have to upload in sRGB so that means color, but where R=G=B (all neutrals).

You'll NEVER got a fully neutral, across the page output from an Indigo, thanks to their screening. Send an entire page of middle gray, the page will print with areas of neutral and non neutral 'patterns' throughout the page and there isn't anything you or Blurb can do about. But HP could fix their screening!

The cover is printed using a different press technology than inside so it's not uncommon to find a visual difference. The better the process control on Blurb's end, the better the match but again, you're looking at two different print technologies.

[jjj]

In order for our printer to minimize the chance of a shift in color to show in print, we recommend removing all color from all black and white images."

Nice looking B+W photos are rarely in fact pure B+W. In ye olde darkroom days you would use warm [brownish] or cool [bluish] toned papers and if you wanted to get fancy you could do duotones or tritones. Pure B+W images with no 'colour' tend to look flat and dull.

[bns]

Andrew, thanks a lot for your clarification. I should have investigated the attainable quality in the first place.

Cheers, Boudewijn

[pflower]

I have produced a lot of books with Blurb, both in colour and B&W.  I also had problems with colour casts on B&W images at the outset.  I now produce books with Adobe Indesign and not through LR but have found that in order to get neutral B&W you have to strip out all colour information before sending off to Blurb.  

My workflow is to export tiffs from LR into a folder.  I then run a batch process in Photoshop which desaturates each image, converts it to greyscale and then converts back to RGB tiffs.  Probably overkill to both desaturate and convert to greyscale but this works.  I found I needed to do this even though the source images were scanned B&W negatives.

It does extend the process but when paying not inconsiderable money for a book it seems worthwhile.  Equally I only order with the Pro Line papers.  Works for me.

Good luck

[digitaldog]

Nice looking B+W photos are rarely in fact pure B+W. In ye olde darkroom days you would use warm [brownish] or cool [bluish] toned papers and if you wanted to get fancy you could do duotones or tritones. Pure B+W images with no 'colour' tend to look flat and dull.

Will do no good here, the screening is the issue and any warm, cool or in-between tone will vary in color and tone across the page in a pattern. Yes, it's harder to produce a dead nuts neutral. But toning the work will produce the same problems on an Indigo, a solid gray or a solid warm/cool or other tone. They can't reproduce the same tone and color over the page from the same numbers. Nothing you can do about it.

[jjj]

Will do no good here, the screening is the issue and any warm, cool or in-between tone will vary in color and tone across the page in a pattern. Yes, it's harder to produce a dead nuts neutral. But toning the work will produce the same problems on an Indigo, a solid gray or a solid warm/cool or other tone. They can't reproduce the same tone and color over the page from the same numbers. Nothing you can do about it.

Not saying it will, just that a neutral B+W is not necessarily an appropriate solution. None of my B+Ws are actually B+W for example, they are all split toned or duo/tritoned. So printing them in B+W will make them look quite different and not as intended.
Did a Blurb book with some B+W images in it a while back, don't recall any issues in that respect. Not sure where it is at moment to check, because house is completely upside down whilst my studio and our master bedroom are being built/remodelled. I struggle to even find the seat in my office, so tracking down a book is unlikely as bookshelves themselves are hard to access.  

[digitaldog]

Agreed, toning instead of sending dead nuts neutral values helps. Unfortunately in this case, the screening will likely produce less than ideal results but at least it will not look obviously off neutral by adding some color to the mix.

[bns]

Agreed, toning instead of sending dead nuts neutral values helps. Unfortunately in this case, the screening will likely produce less than ideal results but at least it will not look obviously off neutral by adding some color to the mix.

I might give that a try, since I got a promocode for a reprint. I have got 90 days to make up my mind.

[digitaldog]

This is obviously not the best way to show off the 'issues' with Indigo screening but it's the best I can do short of sending out prints. The image below is a quick shot of two test images that are neutral in value (in Adobe RGB (1998)). They were NOT printed by Blurb and they were printed using a custom profile that IMHO is way better. Anyway, you can see how there appears to be a somewhat rainbow or some might even say "moiré" like pattern of neutrality and color shifting. If you send a full page, which can be 13x19, a neutral middle gray, you'll see the pattern easier but I thougth I'd show you how it appears on an image and a test that gradates in tone. For most images, you never see this effect. But for images with lots of similar tones in large areas, or like these neutral images, it's hard not to see. The linescreen and other factors a lab sets up can make this even more visually apparent. That said, of all the digital presses I've worked with over the years, I believe the best overall image and color quality is from Indigo.

It will be interesting to see how ink jet technology in terms of speed improves and if we'll see them someday replace toner based digital presses like this Indigo. Right now, for volumn production work, an Indigo is just much faster and less expensive than ink jet like what we see from Epson's SureLab. I'd love to see 'son of SureLab' that competes in this space some day. The quality would be much better and no such screening or neutrality issues assuming it's well profiled.

http://www.digitaldog.net/files/Indigo_Screen.jpg

[bns]

Thanks again Andrew. This is quite close to what I am seeing in the book. So at least I now have some understanding of the origin of the problem.

Cheers, Boudewijn

[dmward]

There is a way in LR book module to print the page layouts as JPGs.
I've done that in the past to use the layouts for another printer. Those JPGs could then be run through PS to convert to grayscale as Blub suggests. Not sure what that does to eliminate the screen problem that Andrew has described.

[digitaldog]

Not sure what that does to eliminate the screen problem that Andrew has described.

Shouldn't make any difference. The Indigo is still using colored toner to output that data. I did hear about one shop using a newer process that only prints CMY (no K) but I can't imagine that would help.