Black and White printing
The process of getting a decent black and white print from my Epson R2400 has caused me a lot of trouble. With its 3 black inks, it is no doubt that the printer is very capable, but as usual there is several ways of skinning the cat, and not everyone gives a good result. My goal has been to produce good B&W prints, not necessarily neutral (whatever that is), but without metamerism and with a fairly predictable tone scale. A side note on the neutral issue. I don't really like a objectively neutral B&W print. Instead of "neutral", I like to think of my own default print. By default, I mean the kind of tone I like in a print when I don't try to express anything special with the toning. Kind of neutral expression, but not necessarily in objective color. So my kind of neutral print is slightly warm toned.
A warm tone I like
There are many good ways to control the B&W printing that involves putting some amount of money on the table. There are different RIPs, print calibration hardware and even special ink sets, but I wanted to do it low cost. The idea was that I could afford a few more misses instead. The Advanced BW module in the Epson printer driver seems to be a fairly good way of getting neutral prints, or slightly toned prints with very little metamerism, but there is no good way of soft proofing. All the color management, or should I say grey scale management is done by the driver. I know there are people who has made profiles for soft proofing with the ABW, but to do this you need some hardware, I wanted to do without. And then there is the RBG route using canned profiles. The success is very much determined by the quality of the profile. Some paper vendors do a good job, others don't. You just have to try until you find something that works.
Neutral version of the image
The ABW method
Using the ABW module for printing requires some trial and errors, a keen critical eye and time. According to different sources on the net (which I have lost reference to), the ABW module tries to linearize the output from the printer, and does it fairly well. When printing this way, it is important to turn of the color management in the software you're using. You also need to know which gamma you're using on the photo. I found that the best way to prepare the picture is to convert to grey scale and use "Grey Gamma 2.2" as profile.
In the printer driver, select Advanced B&W photo and the paper you're using.
Selecting the ABW module.
When you've got this far, the next step would be to click the color management tab.
Color management in ABW
It seems like the picture gamma, and the tone drop down plays an important role in getting a predictable result. My experience is that the setting "Darker" or "Darkest" is the best suited when using glossy media like Hahnemühle Fine Art Pearl. This may also be influenced by the "Print Quality" setting in the previous dialog. Best Photo requires Darkest, while PhotoRPM requires Darker. You really shouldn't take my word for this, but try for yourself. Do count on wasting a lot of paper before you nail it. Take careful notes of the settings on each printout, and don't change more than one parameter at the time. Especially the shadows may be a problem, and requires special attention. If you use paper that cannot hold that much black, like matte art paper, you should consider to play with the Shadow Tonality slider which will increase or reduce the shadow separation.
To get a slightly warm tone that is not too intrusive, I usually select Horizontal=5 and Vertical=23, but this is also something you will have to try out. Be prepared to waste even more paper.
This process has much in common with working in the good old darkroom. Experience will put you in the right ballpark, and then you will have to evaluate the result, do adjustments and try again. The turnaround time is even comparable since you must wait at least 15 minutes, preferably 30 minutes before you evaluate the print.
While Epson has done a very good job at linearizing the outputs for their own papers, the available settings may not be valid for other papers. This fact, and the fact that you got no way of proofing, which leads to lots of paper waste, makes this method less than ideal. But still it has its sides when you which to create a completely neutral print. There is also some rumors that the driver is able to put down a more dense black in this mode.
Color managed RGB method
By using the color management system that is build into most photography software these days, you can use soft proofing to predict how the result will be on paper. To succeed going this route you need a high quality profile, some knowledge of how to use the color management, and some black magic. When I have tried this, I have found quite a few holes in my color management knowledge, and I will not deny that I am clueless about some of the things I am doing, but I think that goes for most photographers.
The main principle is to process the B&W image in RGB mode, using whatever color profile you think is right. Then you must add the desired toning using a adjustment layer, do the proper print adjustments and print the image in color mode. The main problem as I see it is that even the slightest flaws in either your paper profile or your monitor profile may give you a nasty color cast. So to figure out which paper and profiles you can trust, you have to waste some paper again.
Previously when I have tried this method, I have always ended up with some weird color casts. The only way I have managed to get decent control is to use strong color toning, but that is usually not what I want. Trying to get neutral or close to neutral was very difficult. I am not able to analyze the exact cause of this, but instead I will try to describe the procedure that worked for me.
- Create the B&W image, and make sure it is truly grey scale, that is all channels are exactly the same.
- Add a HSM adjustment layer where you dial inn the desired toning effect. You have to turn on the "Colorize" ticker.
- Soft proof the result and adjust the tonality to make the print look good. I would strongly recommend using the method that apparently is discussed in the Schewe/Reichmann instruction video about printing. I think I read about it on some blog about a year ago, and have used it several times to adjust the tonality for print, but never for adjusting the toning. In short, the technique is to make a duplicate of the image in question, place it side by side with the original and apply. Then you soft proof the orignal and adjust until it look as close as possible to the duplicate (which is not soft proofed). When I adjust tonality I always turn on "Simulate paper color".
- Use the same method to inspect the color toning effect, but turn of the "Simulate paper color" option. If you leave it on, you're in for a surprise.
- Print the image with color managed by photoshop, like any color photograph.
All this looks very simple and straight forward, and in fact it works very well. I did just one thing different, which was instead of adding toning by using a HSM layer, I used a curve layer. Something happened that caused some very noticable metamerism when the toning was subtle. I guess this has something to do with some poorly design curves, but I'm not sure.
Conclusion
The main part of this artcle discusses my experience with the ABW module. I believe this module can be used very well, but I think some sort of profiling and proofing is necessary. I know this is possible using a colorimeter like the PrintFix and a couple of tricks, but you have to put some money into it. You can achieve very good result with experience and experimentation, both using ABW and color mode.
As I see it, both the ABW and color method has shortcomings and strengths, and I haven't given up any of them. If you want a completely neutral print, use the ABW, but be prepared to go a few rounds on the print. If you want to do color toning, use the color method, but watch closely for metamerism effects, especially if the toning is very subtle.