Printing in black and white

[DanK]

An issue that came up in another thread this week is how best to control color when printing black and white. In the case of printing color, the best option is to let software control the color, using the appropriate ICC. In some cases, this means directly turning off control of color in the printer's firmware.

I mentioned in another thread that this is often the wrong solution for black and white. I just searched for a posting by Tim Gray which may have been the first explanation I found for this. It was posted 7 years ago. Here it is:

Tim's Answer: There is such a thing as a black and white profile, which is more commonly referred to as a grayscale profile. However, I don't generally consider this to be an ideal solution when it comes to dealing with a color cast in black and white prints. This is because the primary focus of a black and white profile, from my perspective at least, is to linearize the printed data, helping to ensure that tonal values are represented properly. That won't solve the color issue for printers that use colored inks to create black and white images. And, of course, printing with only the black ink, even if combined with one or more shades of "light black" ink, will result in a print that has a much smaller number of possible tonal values, resulting in gradations that aren't as smooth as they could be or a loss of detail in some areas.

Instead, I generally recommend taking advantage of the rather advanced options for optimizing black and white prints using the printer software. This generally calls for using the option to let the printer manage the color, rather than having Photoshop or Lightroom perform this task. Then, you need to configure the black and white printing mode with your printer's software.

For example, with your Epson R2880, you have an option to use the Advanced Black-and-White Photo Mode, which I highly recommend. This mode provides you with a simple option for achieving extremely accurate black and white prints, including the ability to achieve truly neutral prints without any hint of color.

The particulars of using the advanced options for black and white printing will vary, of course, from one printer manufacturer to the next, and even from one printer model to the next. But in my experience this approach provides the best solution for creating excellent black and white prints with minimal effort.

I have read elsewhere about the Epson Advanced Black and White mode (Andrew Rodney referenced it in another forum), but as I have never printed with an Epson printer, I know nothing about it. In the case of Canon, what is required is telling the firmware that it is B&W and then setting the printing software to let the printer control the color.

I mentioned in the other post that I had seen a slight magenta color casts in B&W prints I made on my old Pixma Pro 100 (or perhaps my even older Pixma Pro 9000 II). This turned out to be the problem. I changed to the settings above, and the problem vanished. I have had no recurrence of the problem since then.

I would have to dig up the old thread with Andrew Rodney, but I have a very, very vague recollection that the color cast on that OP's Epson, using the wrong settings, was green. that may be a completely erroneous memory.

[Manfred M]

Dan - Epson prints do have a bit of a green cast in B&W when you let Photoshop / Lightroom manage the colours and it goes away when one lets the printer manage colours. Canon printers have a magenta cast, as you had mentioned. I have been told that no print is truly pure black as the pigments used in black ink are actually a very, very dark blue, but it's something that we can't see.

One of my sources is a software engineer who writes custom printer drivers for raster image processors (RIP) for Canon, Epson and HP photo printers (the HP machines are the large, wide carriage ones; HP does not compete with Canon or Epson in the desktop line) for a local software house. He has access to high quality spectral data from spectrophotometer measurements from ink sets / papers to do his work.

He is one of the sources that told me that Canon B&W, even when used in B&W printer mode has a very, very slight magenta cast. Epson, he tells me uses only the black and gray inks when creating a B&W print, whereas Canon uses some coloured ink as well. The colour cast is noticeable under high quality light conditions and is easier to to pick up when one looks at either a traditional silver photo paper print or an Epson print beside the Canon print. Most people would never notice this without specifically looking for it.

[Donald]

Epson, he tells me uses only the black and gray inks when creating a B&W print

....... when you print using the Advanced B & W mode.

[Manfred M]

....... when you print using the Advanced B & W mode.

Agreed.

Something else I learned from him is that Epson marketed a CMYK version of both the 3880 and the P800, for use in the pre-press industry. Same printer as you and I use, but a different driver / firmware configuration. The P800 version has been discontinued.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...r_edition.html

The moment we see the word "RIP; Raster Image Processor"; it is for CMYK colour space use.

[DanK]

Epson, he tells me uses only the black and gray inks when creating a B&W print, whereas Canon uses some coloured ink as well.

Interesting. I have read in several places that this is incorrect, that some colored inks are used even in dedicated B&W printing by both Epson and Canon printers. That's what Gray wrote in the piece I posted, and you will see at least two mentions of this in a B&H thread about printing. E.g.:

As for using color ink, all inkjet printers mix color to achieve variable gray values.

The Epson SureColor-series printers that have the Photo and Matte Black inks and the multi grays include the proprietary Epson screening and color management technology designed specifically to produce professional-level black and white prints. This unique screen technology takes advantage of the three-level black technology—along with Yellow, Light Cyan, and Light Magenta—to produce professional black and white prints from either color or grayscale files.

I wasn't able to quickly locate anything by either Canon or Epson about this and need to get back to today's deadlines...

Not that this has any practical implications. As a practical matter, you just have to make sure that you have the software and firmware set as needed.

BTW, I took a look at Advanced Black and White. Nifty. It puts in one place a bunch of controls one might want in doing monochrome images. I haven't seen anything in the Canon firmware that pulls this together, and I don't know whether you can do it in B&W mode.