Digital BW, The Print

I don't think we are at the end of improvements in drivers. 
Hardware is now close to ideal, the machines we dreamed about 
five years ago. Drivers are not there yet, not in combining 
flexibility, color control and ease of use. I doubt that many 
printshops take the time to pinpoint their B&W results like 
some of the members on this list do so there's some margin 
left for quality that isn't in the subjective area like 
photographer's intent. I have some ideas about what could be 
improved on the driver side of B&W printing that isn't found 
in OEM B&W drivers, the  RIPs or David Tobie's approach right 
now. While the OEM drivers lack the precision, the other 
approaches lack the flexibility in use. Next week is Photokina 
though so I could be surprised.

David's idea of using the RGB color management and add real 
B&W profiling to it is the right road. I have asked for 
something like that on the Colorsync list maybe 3 years ago 
and repeated that question when the first K3 printers came 
along. I thought that an extra B&W rendering on normal color 
ICC profiles could be a solution and I still think that that 
isn't a bad idea. Limits the amount of profiles a lot that 
way. The problem with profile creation for B&W solutions will 
be in the profile management and flexible use of the profiles. 
I am almost at the end of a cycle of QTR profile creations 
that had to do with canvas printing. While I had uncoated 
canvas ready, 3 linearisations + profiles: carbon, cool, warm, 
I had to add varnish mat and now varnish gloss. That still 
doesn't cover profiles for the slider steps in between say 
50/50 on QTR's choices. And this is only one canvas quality. 
At least the QTR sliders give you some flexibility in printing 
but only on one axis and softproofing remains fixed with just 
two or three profiles along the way.  I think David's solution 
isn't better on this aspect. It would be better if a B&W 
profile plug-in on Photoshop gave the ability to balance the 
print result and the corresponding soft proof between say 3 
profiles made so you get a gliding scale on several axis in 
that system but still profiled.

QTR is very density based in its applications and that will 
become a bottleneck with the new NgreyNcolor printers. With 
fixed grey inksets: 4,5,6,7K neutral, cool, warm, it is 
fulfilling most needs but it will not  take care of paper 
white compensation. But at least the consistency of the hue 
and saturation is baked in the ink already. With normal color, 
quad toners and NgreyNcolor printers you will always need a 
manual control of saturation and hue in curves to get 
consistency in color tone along the greyscale. I think QTR 
will need a color engine one way or another to get this 
solved. On top of that the same plug-in for Photoshop that I 
suggested for David's solution. Either that or a stand alone 
program that has an interface like Epson's ABW but with some 
exact profiling beacons to navigate between.

David's approach doesn't solve the linearising of odd inksets, 
some third party papers, individual printers. He is right that 
OEM drivers should have some extra paper settings that are not 
fixed on the manufacturer's supply of papers. (last time that 
happened is I think on the 10000 printer driver that I have). 
David's approach still is an "RGB" profiling solution. Used 
with QTR part of the linearising can be filled in but with the 
QTR color control limitations I sketched before. At least it 
gives you the best Dmax possible on that paper (with or 
without mat or gloss varnish :-) + the perceptual grey tone 
separation along the ramp.

So I don't think we are in B&W driver Nirvana yet. Simply 
adding dedicated profiles for every B&W hue tone possible 
isn't a flexible solution. For the NgreyNcolor printers now 
introduced on a wider scale and in my opinion the best 
solution for the printshop we will need more advanced B&W 
color management but with flexibility and ease of use like 
sketched above. ICC profile management will still be needed 
too. Love to see B&W profiling added as a rendering to ICC 
color profiles. For that you need a five to ten year lobby at 
the higher color management institutes. It would be a shame 
all that doesn't run on Qimage :-)  And before I forget it 
make a QTR based Windows driver that communicates through 
Windows API with Qimage.

I doubt when that is done there's only photographer's intent 
we can compete on for the best B&W Print. What did we see in 
analogue B&W printing after Adams made the first good analogue 
B&W prints: new films, new papers, archival development, 
multi-grade paper and enlargers,  etc etc. Right now the best 
analogue prints are made, with and without the right 
photographer's intent, it will not be different with digital 
prints even when B&W digital prints are replaced for 90% by 
B&W flatscreens on the wall.

Ernst
                    --
           Ernst Dinkla


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