Digital BW, The Print

Hello Frank,

>I use ConverttoB&W Pro for all my B&W conversions in Photoshop. I
>love the interface and the output. It really shines with toned 
>images. I¹m so new to B&W and not having a film background I¹m 
>still trying to wrap my mind about the different ³classical² toning 
>effects and how I can reproduce it with ConverttoB&W. 

>My question is what settings should I have in ABW mode to maintain 
>the toned look I¹ve so carefully built in PS? Should it be 
>considered a neutral print?

I don't have experience with that software but am assuming that it's a
color image if you can see toning effects.  The ABW mode assumes it's
dealing with a BW image, and you have to "dial in" whatever tone you
want with the controls.  Even though the image is RGB, I think the
driver will do some sort of BW conversion (probably desaturation) and
then start from there as if it was a BW image.  So your toning will be
lost and you'll probably have less control over the result (some of
the grayscale values may change) than if you converted the image to
grayscale yourself and do the toning with the ABW controls.

The alternative is to not use ABW mode, but print it as a color image.
 In that case you'll have to deal with color management and all that
goes with it in order to make the print look like what you see on
screen.  This can be done but is more difficult and time consuming,
and loses the advantages of ease and simplicity that are outlined in
the article.  Plus, the print will likely have much more color ink in
it, where the ABW print will have more of the 3 blacks and less color ink.

Either way can result in beautiful prints, but they are two very
different paths.

Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm