Digital BW, The Print

On Sat, Oct 08, 2005 at 07:36:00PM -0000, Clayton Jones wrote:
> 
> It's hard to answer because of not enough information (what printer
> and settings),

Epson 1280, matte paper-heavyweight, print quality "photo".

> and also I don't know what you mean by "washed out". 

The dark grays are not dark enough.

> BO's weakness shows up in the midtones in smooth areas (without lots
> of small detail), but it's because of the more apparent graininess,
> not something I would describe as washed out.

I don't think this is a weakness in BO -- I think I'm not using it
right.  In the past, when I've gotten the settings right in BO through
trial and error, the results have been more than satisfactory.

> That term to me suggests lack of density or contrast, but my
> experience with BO printing is that it is very strong in these areas,
> giving a very accurate rendering of the screen image (when using the
> settings I suggest for good WYSIWYG) with excellent contrast and tonal
> separation. 

I prefer to work in RGB space, so I can have a channel mixer layer --
so I couldn't quite follow your cookbook.  However, even when I did
convert to grayscale, I found the results to be *exactly* what I was
getting to beging with.  That is, changing the display profile didn't
change the on-screen appearance, and since I was using "same as
source" for the printer profile, in the end nothing was changed.

> So I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to suggest, other
> than experiment with adjustment curves and other papers.

I played around with Paul's step wedge, as you suggested, and found
that it was as I thought -- dark grays were too light.  So I decided
to set my monitor profile to an RGB profile that I made with Apple's
Display Profiler Assistant (by eye), and play with the printer
profiles.  The one that seems to produce a reasonable ramp is Gamma
1.8.

> The BO articles (#3 and #4) give a general description and
> instructions, but nothing that specifically addresses "washed out mid
> tones".

They did help me figure out what to play with, though, and they
refreshed my memory of how print spaces work -- so they were helpful.

> >On second thought, even better would be some kind of profile so 
> >I could tell Photoshop about BO's odd curve.  That way, what's 
> >on my screen would bear some resemblance to what prints.
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean by "BO's odd curve", but one of BO's
> strengths is that profiles are not needed.  IMO pursuing this would be
> an excersise in frustration and a waste of time. 

Sorry-- what I meant was a print color space.

> Regardless of what you mean by "washed out", it may be that the image
> simply doesn't work well in BO.  I have a number of images that didn't
> and I used UT7 for them (now am using K3/2400). 

I use UT2 for those.  Though, if the approach I'm playing with now
gets me more consistently WYSIWYG results, I might re-try some images
I'd given up on.

-- 
 Ben Rosengart                                          ben@...
       "Young people should be seen and not heard, because they're
        good-looking but not too bright.  We're pretty bright now,
        but we're ugly." -- Grace Slick on the '60s youth movement