Digital BW, The Print

> There's basically two camps that I see.   One is that B&W is just a low-gamut
> color process.   In theory its just color printing but there's more attention paid
> to the near gray region rather than the high chroma areas.  This is what David
> Tobie is concentrating on now.  The other camp is that B&W is a grayscale
> process where hue/tone can be introduced as desired.  I've mostly worked in
> this camp.  It has advantages and disadvantages.  You've seen one of the
> disadvantages because of the proliferation of profiles -- both QTR and ICC.
> Unfortunately the ICC profiles have no concept of blending so whatever is done
> in PS and softproofing based on ICC profiles can't have any variable tone.
> But on the other side I think having the toning separate from the image data
> matches more of what B&W toning has always been.   I tend to do series where
> I like all the same toning so having it separate fits my desires.
> 
> But in any case I'd be interested in your views about various workflows and
> evolution of B&W printing.
> 
> Roy

I can only agree on what you write here. It is a divided up in 
those camps. And while the two camps may be different the 
proliferation of profiles is shared and that isn't a nice 
idea. In David's approach something like blending  of ICC 
profiles is the only possibility to keep profile numbers low 
and ease of use + flexibility high.I do understand that ICC 
profiles have no concept of blending. The Advanced B&W drivers 
of more manufacturers now build on a concept of blending but 
do not use ICC profiles. Steve Kale uses QTR created profiles 
in Photoshop and combines them with the Epson ABW driver as I 
understand it correctly. That will fix some choices within the 
blending possibilities of that driver which is a pity. It will 
work perfect for the photographer who likes to keep a kind of 
uniformity in the B&W prints and doesn't need a wide variety 
of choices. You mentioned that already for your work The 
underlying calibration of the printer should keep the ABW 
driver consistent for that approach. It looks like that aspect 
gets better with every new printer generation. Whether it is 
as good as the linearisations possible with QTR has to be seen.

Paul, you and others have worked on curves with and without 
toners. One of the goals is to get similar Dmax on one paper 
with different toned curve creations. The perceptually right 
tone separation should fit equally well if that is established 
and QTR linearisation + profiling takes care of that. Then 
there is the chroma that should be perceptually equal along 
the ramp while keeping hue shifts reduced along the same path. 
Paul can control that a bit by using different hue mixes in 
the light and dark toner of quad sets and for the rest it is a 
trial and error system controlled by the eye. QTR isn't better 
than that. Density measurement on the toner isn't a substitute 
for chroma measurements not mentioning hue shifts. On the 
other hand the Lab a en b data are available so there could be 
more color control based on the data. Right now it is only 
used to represent in the soft proof what the curves and ink 
toners do but nothing more. However t he same information 
could be used to create toner curves and at the front building 
on that a flexible and interactive representation model could 
be made. Similar in appearance to the ABW driver.That doesn't 
have to be an ICC profile blending system but at least it 
builds on measured data with perceptual curves added and with 
a strong base in QTR. A plug-in for Photoshop could be the way 
to do it like we see them appearing for the new generation of 
Ncolor printers.  Unlike the last the QTR applications could 
also help to create the underlying curves for grey tone, 
chroma and even hue and keep the total calibrated. If in that 
system one ICC like profile per paper is used that takes care 
of the perceptual tone separation and the other data needed 
for chroma and hue is taken from the choices in the blending 
system you could reduce the profile quantity and keep the 
flexibility and ease of use. Both soft proof and printer will 
then be controlled from the profile + the blending choices.

I'm curious on how this is done with the Canon and HP models.

My 2 cents.



Ernst
                    --
           Ernst Dinkla


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