B&W printing options

[Alan Goldhammer]

I'm not on a Mac but my understanding from the countless threads on LuLa is that MacOS supports Epson ABW printing but does not allow soft proofing (you certainly can soft proof a B/W print using a conventional profile and if you use a conventional profile there are ways to improve the B/W performance by including a B/W step wedge set of patches when you generate the profile).

[Mark D Segal]

I'm not on a Mac but my understanding from the countless threads on LuLa is that MacOS supports Epson ABW printing but does not allow soft proofing (you certainly can soft proof a B/W print using a conventional profile and if you use a conventional profile there are ways to improve the B/W performance by including a B/W step wedge set of patches when you generate the profile).

Alan, are you getting ABW soft-proofing on Windows? I thought this limitation is with the ABW approach and not the operating system, but............?

[TylerB]

I'm not sure what the soft proof issue is here.. ABW in and of itself has nothing to do with soft proofing. The OS and and app do... but any soft proofing depends on the existence of a profile. Unless one makes or acquires one, there is no inherent ability to proof. For ABW using the EOM driver, or for QTR, these are easily created with the tools that come with QTR for an economical shareware price. Other methods are available as Eric Chan demonstrated. Depending on various workflows, you may have to make RGB or normal single channel versions. Using ABW, which I believe will not allow for a profile conversion in the print path, and requires a 2.2 gamma file space for best results, you'd use your profile in soft proof with preserve numbers checked. There are other specifics involved depending on workflow and driver, etc, but to my knowledge, nothing impairing a softproof workflow on the Mac.

[Alan Goldhammer]

Alan, are you getting ABW soft-proofing on Windows? I thought this limitation is with the ABW approach and not the operating system, but............?

Yes, I do get soft-proofing with ABW profiles.  It's locked out with MacOS but still available with Win7.  There was a rather long thread on this last year:  http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=85317.0   Phil Brown said that it still works with Win8.1 and I'm still on Win7

Alan

EDIT:  I should clarify that the profiles are prepared using the QTR scripting tool with a 51 step B/W patch set printed with the ABW driver.

EDIT#2: Tyler is incorrect, one cannot soft proof with MacOS using up to date system as referenced in the link I posted above.

[Mark D Segal]

Thanks Alan - correct - I recall that thread now - useful.

[TylerB]

...EDIT#2: Tyler is incorrect, one cannot soft proof with MacOS using up to date system as referenced in the link I posted above.

Hello Alan, I can be addressed directly like a human as well. These examples are with PS CC 2014.2.1 Release. OSX v 10.9.5

You may be right about the very newest OSX versions, in which case I stand corrected. The profiles used here are made with QTR-Create-ICC or QTR-Create-ICC-RGB accordingly, for a client's personal QTR and paper setup. I assure I have done the same thing for other clients using the ABW driver, with similar success.
In all cases the ABW driver could be invoked when printing. Of course in that case, one would have checked preserve numbers for soft proofing while editing, since profile conversion is not in that specific print path. I hope the captures make sense, if I am missing something I'm happy to be corrected. Examples are show for both RGB B&W and grayscale B&W, each with RGB and Single channel builds of the profiles.
The hue in the softproof is due to the specific QTR curves used for hue control in this specific setup, as QTR profiles, whether single channel or RGB builds, use RGB softproof LUTs.
Tyler

[Alan Goldhammer]

Tyler - I was only repeating what was said last year on the lengthy exchange.  I don't have a Mac so I cannot give any first hand knowledge about this.  If it works for you that is great; I'll let other Mac users weigh in on this.

Alan

[DavidPalermo]

By reading just about all of the comments here it sounds like I can make perfectly good BW prints using Epson's ABW and Epson's inks in a 3800 printer!  Logic tells me that having 7 different shades of BW inks would produce a much better tonal range in a print over Epson's ABW module.  In reading there comments here it doesn't sound like there is a dramatic difference.  If there is not a dramatic difference why spend hundreds of dollars on Cone's inks? 

Or am I missing something?  I wish I could make a print myself on my 3800 and make an identical print using Cone's inks to really see if there is much of a difference!

Frustrating.  ; )

[Mark D Segal]

By reading just about all of the comments here it sounds like I can make perfectly good BW prints using Epson's ABW and Epson's inks in a 3800 printer!  Logic tells me that having 7 different shades of BW inks would produce a much better tonal range in a print over Epson's ABW module.  In reading there comments here it doesn't sound like there is a dramatic difference.  If there is not a dramatic difference why spend hundreds of dollars on Cone's inks? 

Or am I missing something?  I wish I could make a print myself on my 3800 and make an identical print using Cone's inks to really see if there is much of a difference!

Frustrating.  ; )

I don't know what logic would tell you that seven grey inks are better than three. That isn't the only factor determining output quality; for example there is the paper you use, ink mixing, dithering and tonality management in your imaging software. Obviously there are algorithms controlling ink lay-down from the three channels that produce the maximum Black and the smooth and subtle tonalities that these printers can deliver - as well as your skill in preparing the files. I don't think there is any alternative but comparative testing to see whether the Cone approach outperforms Epson's on whatever the criteria you set. You'd need to find someone with the appropriate set-up to work with.

[Stefan Ohlsson]

By reading just about all of the comments here it sounds like I can make perfectly good BW prints using Epson's ABW and Epson's inks in a 3800 printer!  Logic tells me that having 7 different shades of BW inks would produce a much better tonal range in a print over Epson's ABW module.  In reading there comments here it doesn't sound like there is a dramatic difference.  If there is not a dramatic difference why spend hundreds of dollars on Cone's inks? 

Or am I missing something?  I wish I could make a print myself on my 3800 and make an identical print using Cone's inks to really see if there is much of a difference!

Frustrating.  ; )

Logic is sometimes bad for you, experience is better. If you have a 3800 printer, go ahead and print a file with ABW. Then you can request a test print from Cone from the same file. Do a comparison when you get the print from him. If you don't see any difference, go ahead and print with ABW and be happy. If you see a difference you have to decide if the better quality is worth the extra expense and that you now will have a printer that you only can use for B&W printing. Your own experience is much more important than the logic that more inks=better result.

Best regards

Stefan
http://www.korta.nu/profiler

[Mark D Segal]

Logic is sometimes bad for you, experience is better.
Stefan
http://www.korta.nu/profiler

:-)

[Jeff-Grant]

A lot of what is best comes down to what you print. In my continued digging on the subject, I read a piece by Jon Cone where he says that, piezography is not for you if you are into high contrast, and heavy blacks. Piezogaphy is about long tonal ranges. My Plan A for now is to use QTR on my3880 with Epson inks and piezography on a 2400 when I want the tones that it can produce.

Again, from my reading, I'm still waiting for my inks to arrive, it occurs to me that your PS work needs more attention with piezography as you are going to see more shadow and highlight detail that with ABW or QTR on Rpson inks.

I wouldn't bother buying the sample prints from IJM. They are too small for serious appraisal.

[Mark D Segal]

A lot of what is best comes down to what you print. In my continued digging on the subject, I read a piece by Jon Cone where he says that, piezography is not for you if you are into high contrast, and heavy blacks. Piezogaphy is about long tonal ranges. My Plan A for now is to use QTR on my3880 with Epson inks and piezography on a 2400 when I want the tones that it can produce.

Again, from my reading, I'm still waiting for my inks to arrive, it occurs to me that your PS work needs more attention with piezography as you are going to see more shadow and highlight detail that with ABW or QTR on Rpson inks.

I wouldn't bother buying the sample prints from IJM. They are too small for serious appraisal.

Jeff, when your inks arrive, it would be useful to do side by side tests of Cone versus Epson driver (not necessarily ABW) vs QTR for a good sample photo that require long tonal range and another that requires high contrast with maximum black. My prediction is that given the state of technology reached in your 3880, you may be surprised how narrow the differences may be - but that's just an intuition as I have not seen such a comparison myself. All I know is the B&W work emerging from my 4900 is good enough to dispel any interest in other options, and the difference of IQ between the 3880 and 4900 is not that much.

[Jeff-Grant]

Mark, will do, and I'll report back.

[Mark D Segal]

Super - I think many members will find that very interesting.

[Jager]

It was this very thread, followed by the one I posted asking some questions about ImagePrint, that led me down the road of... Piezography. 

Six weeks ago I was perfectly happy with ABW.  Although I might have considered a piece of software (a la ImagePrint or QTR), I was adamant against using 3rd-party inks.  I simply wasn't going to go there.

Well, there you go.

During the couple days while I waited for Cone's inks to arrive, I printed a number of recent images using ABW so that I would have a direct basis of comparison.  I've got a spare set of Epson carts waiting in the printer stand, to get me back square, should that be indicated.  Well, well.

I'll have more to say shortly, but the short answer, after making a 100+ prints with Cone's K7 Warm Neutral inkset, on a wide variety of both matte and glossy papers, is there is no question in my mind that Piezography holds a distinctive, consistent, qualitative advantage over ABW.  That advantage is more pronounced in images that benefit from a long tonal range.  And it becomes more profound as you go up in size.

You can easily achieve deep black, high-contrast images, if that's what you're after.  You just have to edit for it.  If you have a pixel that is mapped to tonal values of 1 or 2 or 3, you'll actually get detail from that pixel. Only zero will give you true black.

Same thing on the highlight end. Piezography's inks will differentiate the entire tonal scale. Most other printing systems, including Epson's ABW, can't do that.

That's the good news.  The bad news is that the fidelity is so high that it will reveal every defect in your workflow.  That calibrated monitor that seemed to soft-proof perfectly fine with ABW? Not so much anymore. If you can't see pretty much the entire Adobe 1998 gamut, you're flying blind. Making a print to see what's in that black-as-night shadow seems ass backwards. And it is.

Yes, you'll need that Eizo after all.  And a GTI viewing station.

Like I said, I'll have more to say shortly...

[Jeff-Grant]

Excellent, keep it coming! I can't begin to tell you how happy that makes me.

[Stefan Ohlsson]

You can easily achieve deep black, high-contrast images, if that's what you're after.  You just have to edit for it.  If you have a pixel that is mapped to tonal values of 1 or 2 or 3, you'll actually get detail from that pixel. Only zero will give you true black.

Same thing on the highlight end. Piezography's inks will differentiate the entire tonal scale. Most other printing systems, including Epson's ABW, can't do that.

What other printing system have you tested? As this is one of the reasons that I like ImagePrint that you get this long grayscale, with a good separation in the extreme shadows and highlights. Bu you have to test the different papers that you use, and adjust the shadow point setting to fit that paper.

[Alan Goldhammer]

What is really required but probably difficult to achieve is a double blind visual test of various printing technologies.  We cannot discount what our brains do during subjective testing.  There is a long history of false results in the high end audio field with "experts" saying that various tweaks to stereo systems lead to superior performance when the science indicates otherwise.

[Mark D Segal]

What is really required but probably difficult to achieve is a double blind visual test of various printing technologies.  We cannot discount what our brains do during subjective testing.  There is a long history of false results in the high end audio field with "experts" saying that various tweaks to stereo systems lead to superior performance when the science indicates otherwise.

I agree Alan. When I need to do comparative testing and the outcomes aren't blatantly obvious, I write on the BACK of the print which is which, and ask my better half to tell me what she observes different between the prints without even letting-on what I am testing for. Very helpful! :-)