Digital BW, The Print

> From: Joe Davajon [mailto:davajon@...]
>
> Here is the procedure alleged to be a simple way of printing B@W on the
> 2200 as referred to on this site recently.
>
>      1.  Image must be in RGB
>      2.  Go to Image then Adjustments then desaturate to remove
>            possible color tints.
>      3.  Now go to Print with Preview and change the Print Space
>            to ColorMatch.
>      4.  Print.  Media should be the paper you're using and set
>            ink to "Color".  Setting is on "Automatic.  Set your quality
>            and print.
>
> I'd be pleased to hear experiences from this group on how
> successfully this works in your case.

There are two parts to this. First of all, the author is recommending
conversion to B&W by desaturation. This is the minimal way to do the
conversion, and loses all the nice control that is available by using the
channel mixer, a grayscale proof setup, or the layers technique recently
mentioned.

Second of all, the author is recommending setting the print space to
ColorMatch RGB. Since the image is B&W, the color gamut of the profile is
irrelevant, so the only thing that is significant about this is that this
tells Photoshop that the printer has a gamma of 1.8. If this works, then it
means that with the driver set the way he suggests, the printer has a gamma
of 1.8.

However, my 2200 driver has no Automatic setting, in either the Basic or
Advanced mode. What ought to work would be to go into the Advanced mode,
select Color Controls, set Gamma to 1.8, leave Color Mode on Standard, and
leave the sliders at zero. Of course, you could do the same thing by telling
PS that the print space is Adobe RGB and selecting a gamma of 2.2 in the
driver.

None of this is particularly unconventional. However, it assumes that the
printer driver, with Color Controls (if that's what he meant by Automatic)
selected, is accurately represented, at least for B&W, by a simple gamma 1.8
(or 2.2) curve. Maybe it is. But the 2200 also comes with a set of actual
ICC profiles, for each standard paper/ink combo, that probably describe the
printer even more accurately. So while there's no harm in testing anything,
I'd guess that using a real profile (instead of just assuming Colormatch RGB
or Adobe RGB) has a better chance of providing accurate results.

--

Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
Paul                mailto:pderocco@...