Digital BW, The Print

Steve and others,

I have been able to print a "gray-matte" image using Qimage directly.

My steps were:

1. Load initial B&W scan.

2. Assign gray-lab working space.

3. Crop, spot, levels, curves, etc. as necessary.  No re-sampling in PS.

4. Save this image as my master TIFF (or PSD).

5. Convert to gray-matte and save as my printable TIFF.

6. All of the above steps are done in my case in 16 bit grayscale as that
was the original scan.

7. Start up Qimage and put the gray-matte image in the queue and print to
file.  Note that I have ICC printer profile turned off in Qimage.

8. Qimage processes the file, saves to my monitor folder and QTRGui/QTR
prints it.

It is true that Qimage DOES convert the file to RGB (8-bit RGB) when Qimage
loads it and you can verify that the "save to file" re-sampled and sharpened
image out of Qimage that is in your QTRGUI "processed" folder is an 8-bit
RGB with no color profile embedded.  I am getting output that is closer to
what I see on the screen with this workflow but I do wish Mike would support
grayscale in Qimage.  16 bit would be nice as well.

If you try to set your Qimage printer profile at gray-matte, Qimage gags and
complains that grayscale is not supported.

I posted a message about supporting grayscale embedded ICC profiles in the
Qimage support group but didn't get even one reply.  So I can only assume
nobody else is doing what we are doing (or cares).  And, Mike didn't respond
either.

Paul