Digital BW, The Print

For those who have a 4800, or those who are simply interested in the tonality of the 
Advanced B&W mode, you can download a set of soft proofs for Ilford Smooth Pearl Paper 
and Epson Premium Semi Gloss here:

http://homepage.mac.com/stevekale/stevekale2/FileSharing37.html

The .psf Adobe Photoshop soft proofing files have been constructed using a 256 step 
wedge printed using:

•	4800 driver v2.33
•	2880dpi
•	High speed off
•	Fine detail
•	Advanced B&W mode
•	The noted hue (cool, neutral, warm or sepia)
•	Darker

The soft proofs have:

•	Preserve RGB numbers checked (PS CS2 lingo)
•	Simulate Black Ink checked

The step wedge was measured using Gretag Macbeth's Eye One spectrophotometer.  

On a Mac the .psf files should be placed in:

~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Color/Proofing

I have done soft proofs for Ilford Smooth Pearl (ISP) and Epson Premium Semi-gloss (PSG) 
so far.  I do not intend to do proofs for other options (eg dark, lighter) but may add other 
papers over time, eg some matte papers.  The Darker setting produces very good results 
from a Gray Gamma 2.2 workspace and I would rather tweak a soft proof with a "print 
curve" than tweak at the driver level except for picking hue.  

Even though images are printed with No Color Adjustment/Same as Source and hence only 
the file numbers are sent to the printer (no profile), the appearance of the image on your 
display depends on its embedded ICC profile.  (Assign a new profile and the colors 
associated with the same file numbers change.  Convert to a new profile and the 
underlying file numbers are changed so that the image looks the same with the new 
profile).   My assumption is that Epson worked with Adobe RGB (and hence its subset Gray 
Gamma 2.2) when creating the settings for the Advanced B&W driver.   This seems to be 
born out experience thus far.   Therefore I intend to use Gray Gamma 2.2 as my B&W 
workspace.

Cheers

Steve