Digital BW, The Print

Jim,

Just a couple of thoughts:

1 - Roy Harrington, the man who wrote QTR for Epson printers has recently produced some software for Mac's to allow printing with correct use of profiles. From memory this will work with Canon's or indeed any other printer and like QTR I think it is shareware. It would be worth looking this up as I suspect your problem is how Adobe, Apple and the Epson interact and apply profiles. I haven't used it as although I use Mac's for processing images I do all of my printing (and indeed scanning) using PC's as I have found them more reliable for those purposes. 

2 - as Ernst said it is possible to produce neutral B&W with the OEM inksets from any of the big three manufacturers today (it wasn't not that long ago) on either matte or gloss papers. QTR won't work with your Canon but the Bowhaus solution does essentially the same thing. If using this or the OEM B&W solution suits you (and if relevant your clients) then you are done without needing additional printers or inks. There is a lot to be said for this approach as it keeps things simple. 

3 - if you decide to go for a dedicated B&W printer then you have lots of options to consider depending on your choice of printer, ink, papers, etc, and lots of learning ahead of you. Reading Paul Roark's papers is a good start as is reading Jon Cone's Piezography blog/website. David Kachel's suggestion of the Eboni 6 set is a very good recommendation if you can live with just matte papers (or satin if you use Photorag Satin).

If it helps I print for clients in the UK and tend to use Epson inks for glossy B&W prints on the "fibrebased" papers, Epson or MIS Eboni inks for matte coated papers and Eboni for uncoated papers. I also have several shades of Piezography inks in smaller printers that I use for myself when I have the time to print my own work. In all cases I use QTR for profiling and linearising the ink paper combinations as it gives much greater control over ink flow and I have to date been too mean to pay for Studioprint. To date, and I have been doing this since before 2000 with various printer/ink combinations, I haven't suffered from significant colour shifts or fading with my B&W prints but I know I have been lucky in that respect even though I have been careful with materials

David

Sent from my iPad

> On 28 Oct 2014, at 10:50, James Petrillo japty4644@... [DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint] <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Bob,
> 
> I agree that there are some gremlins involved here. I do use PS CC, so hopefully that eliminates that potential issue. However, I did notice last night that when I duplicated an image for soft-proofing it was not an exact match. Probably 95% or better match, but I could tell in certain areas of the image that there was enough of a difference that I could discern it. Trying to get that image to match was very time consuming and practically impossible for me to do. Am I missing something here? When you duplicate something and place it side-by-side, should it not be an exact match?
> 
> Jim
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, October 28, 2014 5:56 AM, "'Bob Frost' bobfrost@... [DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint]" <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>  
> Hi,
> 
> I've just sold a used R2400 to a Mac owner, and he can't get B&W prints 
> without a magenta color cast, no matter what profile he uses. No casts with 
> my Windows setups and the same paper profiles. Has ColorSync got more 
> gremlins in it? But if you are using Photoshop, that should avoid any 
> colorsync problems, shouldn't it? Is it a genuine printer profile, or an 
> Apple modified one? Just a few thoughts, as we've been scratching our heads 
> for two weeks on this problem.
> 
> Bob Frost
> 
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: James Petrillo japty4644@... [DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint]
> 
> Thank you for your response. I just had ColorHQ redo my profiles and just 
> assumed that they were good. However, I have changed just about everything I 
> have to get better matches, both for color and B and W and I am still not 
> where I need to be. I have a new Eizo that is very well calibrated, I have a 
> new iMac and I have gone from CS6 to PS CC. So, perhaps I need to have the 
> profiles done again.
> 
> 
> 
>