Digital BW, The Print

> Dan,
> 
> Since you are working with a grayscale image in a 2.2 Gamma Grayscale
> color space, how are calibrating the on screen grayscale view to the
> final print? Or does this flow through using Paul's workflows? Or
> have I missed something all together?
> 
> Martin Wesley

I may have missed something but I thought the idea was to convert the
grayscale image to RGB before printing.  Once you have converted to RGB if
you have a good RGB profile which shows how it will actually print then you
can use that to preview the final print.  Unless (and this is what I missed
in Paul's workflow) you make color tweaks in the driver.  Since a profile is
always made with no tweaks in the driver other than a media type selection
my comment on profiles and previewing is not appropriate to a workflow which
uses driver tweaks instead of tweaks in the RGB file.

Further, from within the grayscale image (before conversion to RGB), there
is no way you are going to truly preview either any tweaks you might make in
RGB or any tweaks you might make in the driver.  So (basically) there is no
way, with this workflow, to get any *real* grayscale preview of the final
print at all.  

On the other hand, if the driver tweaks are relatively consistent it would
be quite possible to find an RGB gamma conversion at print time that gives
at least a somewhat consistent translation of the on-screen rendition.  To
do that one would have to make a series of custom Adobe RGBs each with its
gamma and print a standard print through each of them (selected in the Print
Space printer dialog).  The print that matches the screen most closely
reflects the custom Adobe RGB version that should be used from then on in
the print space.  Thus, the standard 2.2 grayscale gamma working space will
will be calibrated with the final print by the print process itself.  Don't
even need to convert the file to Adobe RGB before printing since by
selecting your custom Adobe RGB version in the print space the grayscale to
RGB conversion is done automatically at print time.   Not really a preview
since it won't show any color tinting that the slider adjustments would
create and it won't work if there is a lot of difference in the slider
settings from print to print.  Only works for a standardized workflow which
is what I think Paul has set up.

Note that making custom versions of Adobe RGB is actually a lot easier in
Photoshop 5 than Photoshop 6 since PS 5 lets you save them as standard RGB
profiles while Photoshop 6 makes you save the whole color settings setup
which you then select as "Working RGB" in the print dialog box.  So don't
trash that old version of 5.0!!!  It does a few things PS 6 does not.

-- Dan Culbertson
so many years, so little time...