Digital BW, The Print

Ben:

Is your printer color space the same as your working color space in
PS? If so, that is probably your problem. You need the dot gain to
compensate for the lightness. 

Clayton's method is excellent. But for a short cut: set your working
space to Gray Gamma 2.2 and your printer color space to Dot Gain 20%
and see if that helps. 

Sorry I can't help you if you do b&w in RGB. 

Bob Michaels

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Ben Rosengart
<yahoo.com@n...> wrote:
>
> 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@n...
>        "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
>