Colors in B&W printing output

Open Discussion
1

I’m posting this here as I suspect a lot of the world’s experts in B&W printing may be on this forum.

I am printing to an Epson 9900, Epson 1400 and Epson R260.

Mostly we print color output of art prints or reproductions seeking colormetric results.

Recently my partner did a bunch of B&W pen & ink drawings and I am trying to print reproductions of those drawings.

I scanned them into digital files using and Epson xl10000 as grayscale files trying a variety of scanner profiles including the native epson and colorsync profiles as well as scanner profiles I created using i1pro and VueScan.

I’m getting all kinds of anomalies in the printed output:

Epson R260: a garish green tint in the grays and sometimes two or three additional colors
Epson 1400: a strong maroon or blue colorcast, almost like a duotone print.
Epson 9900: Almost B&W but with a blue-ish colorcast in the grays

Nothing looks like the stark black and white of the original pen & ink drawings.

I am printing from Photoshop with image mode set to grayscale and am using an Adobe RGB colorspace. I have tried various rendering intents with no significant effect on the output. I’m using printer profiles that I created for each printer with i1pro.

Can anyone tell me how to print out an image (short of changing inks to Conecolor piezo inks) that results in a true B&W image?

Thanks,

–Kenoli

2

It is normal to get some amount of green/blue or reddish tinting when you print BW with color inks, and you wouldn’t want to print with black ink only (poor quality).
Obviously the best solution would be to use Piezography inks to print true BW images, but I will
You will need very exact color management to get the best BW results with color inks. If your three printers are producing different results, you may have better results if you use different settings.
Grayscale mode doesn’t use an RGB working space- do you mean you’re using a desaturated RGB image with Adobe RGB(1998) embedded profile/working space?

What paper(s) are you printing on? Are you printing from a Mac or Windows? What media type setting are you selecting? Feel free to attach screen captures of your print settings, and I’ll review them for you to see if I can offer.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have further questions, or there’s anything else I can help you with.
Best regards~ Dana :slight_smile:

3

Thanks, Dana. You are clearing my thinking a bit.

I’m realizing in color settings in Photoshop there is a range of gray settings which include some “Dot Gain” settings, a couple of gamma settings and the colorsync default gray. I’ll have to try these. Do you recommend a particular setting? I actually misspoke when I said Adobe RGB, I guess. I presume when the image type is grayscale it uses whatever is set in the gray menu in Color Settings. What was set in there just now when I opened it was “Dot Gain 20%.”

We are on a mac. I’m currently using Mountain Lion on this machine but have been considering upgrading to Mavericks.

We are printing on a variety of papers,including some of the piezography paper that you sold off some time back, some of Epson’s enhanced matte, and canvas and vinyl. The paper we are printing the ink drawings on is the enhanced matte. I’m using the “enhanced matte” media setting for this and the paper I got from you as at some point Jon suggested that. We’re making our own color profiles for all these media with an i1pro.

I just remembered that i1pro has a color target with extended grays on it and I don’t think I’ve been using that. Do you think this would make a difference?

I’ll send some screen shots of my driver settings.

I couldn’t figure out how to add files. I clicked on “Manage attachments” below and went to the files but it wouldn’t let me attach them to the message. I converted them to jpg as it said, but can’t figure out how to get them into the message. There are red “!” marks next to them as if there were something wrong, but I can’t figure out what that is.

I use color management: off
2800 dpi
“enhanced matte” paper
matte black
supermicroweave (chosen for me)
High Speed
Renering Intent: absolute colormetric

I think that’s about it.

Thanks,

–Kenoli

4

We don’t use the i1 to make profiles, but if there is a target that has more gray patches, maybe that would benefit you. We make color ICC profiles with over 1,700 color patches for the best range.
This may help you attach files: http://www.inkjetmall.com/tech/content.php?152-How-to-attach-images-to-this-forum

Best regards~ Dana :slight_smile:

5

Also, this document needs to be updated with the newest OS + Photoshop versions, but is a info guide for printing with color ICC profiles: http://conecolor.com/icc/index.html