ABW - I'm late to the party

[FrankG]

Yes, I know this is old hat to most of you.

The ABW profiles (Eric Chan) are only available if you choose to let PS manage the colors (just as a profile is used in a regular RGB image) and they are not available with Printer manages color.
Conversely, I can only access ABW controls when Printer manages the colors is selected, which excludes the profiles.
It seems that it is one or the other - PS manages col + profile, or Printer manages  col +ABW ?

Am I missing something?
And if this is true then the ABW profiles are not really ABW profiles are they - the naming is somewhat misleading ?

Are you guys using ABW (Printer manages col) or are you letting PS manage col and using a profile?

Epson 3880 v 8.64
OSX 10.6.8
PS CS6

Frank

[howardm]

They (Apple) changed OS/printer driver setup a number of years ago so yes, you can't actually use the profiles w/ ABW mode.

There may be some workaround(s) but I'm sure others will have more info or a search will yield lots of hits.

[Alan Goldhammer]

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=85317.0 is the long discussion on this matter from a year ago.  You cannot use ABW profiles with MacOS which is too bad.

[BobShaw]

If you use Mirage and probably other RIP type software then you have an option "Normal" or "Grey" (B/W).

[FrankG]

thanks, I'll look through the linked thread.
I seem to have discovered that i cant use profiles the empirical way :-)
So the question at the end of the original post is (other than a 3rd party rip) which way are you producing b&w?

[Stefan Ohlsson]

thanks, I'll look through the linked thread.
I seem to have discovered that i cant use profiles the empirical way :-)
So the question at the end of the original post is (other than a 3rd party rip) which way are you producing b&w?

The quality of ABW is a step ahead of using a normal ICC profile. Just do some test strips, like we used to do in the darkroom. Would I like to be able to soft proof with ABW? Of course, things would be much easier for those of you that don't use a RIP and want to print high quality B&W. I use a RIP and can soft proof in Photoshop and in the RIP preview window.