Digital BW, The Print

> A student of mine is photographing digitally then desaturating the
> images in PS. She is then using the history brush to bring specific
> colour spots back into the image. The colour picker shows that the B&W
> portions of the image are absolutely neutral. Yet there is a magenta
> cast in the mid to highlight areas and green tones in the mid to
> shadow areas.
>
> Can anyone suggest a workaround that will avoid these cross curves yet
> retain the colour spots? (Colorspace: Adobe 1998, Epson 4000, Epson
> enhanced matte and Epson EM profile, Epson driver.)
>
John

the problem is that on the whole printing greyscale with the Epson
driver/profiles is going to give you those colour crossovers - which is why
people are using either quadtone/grey inks or things like the Quadtone RIP
for neutral prints.

But that doesn't help your need for colour as well - the Imageprint RIP will
let you do this - a neutral greyscale and you can mix in colour just as you
describe - but it's pretty expensive for the 4000

(I don't know if the Epson greyscale set-up on the new and better 4800 lets
you do this?)

The only other option would be to intentionally "tone" your greyscale say a
slight sepia or such - so you are actually picking a slight colour to the
greyscale aspect (there are a number of sites around that give some good
toning curves or workflows for free - I personally like using either the
PhotoKit options or the toning options in "Convert to B&W Pro" [which also
gives better B&W options than desaturate] - but those aren't free)

What I find is that by giving the image a slight warm tone (you can chose
others such as cooler or selenium as well) that the driver has an easier
time giving you a toned print than an entirely neutral one. Then you could
probably go ahead and recover the small colour sections as she is doing
using saved layers etc.

tim a