Digital BW, The Print

This appears to be a strange introduction in CS4 (not Apple as far as I can tell).
It seems that Grayscale files in CS4 do not allow printing with No CM selected on
the Preview page.   This happens with both the Epson driver and QTR driver but
curiously not with the PDF driver and my laser printer driver.

I can see a few ways to get around this:  
1) You can select Photoshop Manages Color and select a print profile identical
to the document.  Since its untagged use the Grayscale working space in the
Color Settings..  You'll be getting a CM conversion but since source and dest
are the same no data will actually be changed.

2) Convert the target to RGB and then use it.  The main caveat here though is that
Photoshop uses CM when it changes Mode to RGB.  Even though the original file
is untagged it will be treated as grayscale working space and get converted to
RGB working space.  If they do not have the same internal curve the numbers will
be changed.  The easiest pair to use is GG 2.2 and Adobe RGB.  Set these in 
Color Settings... before converting.  Look at the histogram while you convert
to see the before and after.  They should be identical.
-- another way to do this is:  duplicate gray channel getting 3 identical channels,
then Mode > Multichannel and finally Mode > RGB.  This avoids the CM --
Now you can select No CM when printing.

3) The suggestion Printer Manages Color may also work but I don't know for
sure that the OS Colorsync CM wouldn't get in the act too.

4) Finally, a completely different approach is to print the target using Preview
instead of PS/CS4.   This "ought" to do the same thing but testing it would be
necessary.

Roy


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "kingdex3434" 
<kingdex3434@...> wrote:
>
> I'm Mac, Intel, 10.5.5
> 
> Is anyone grappling with the fact that in CS4 it is not possible to select "No Color 
> Management" when printing grayscale files? And, even though "No Color Management" is 
> available when printing RGB files it is not possible to print "black & white" RGB files to 
ABW if 
> "No Color Management" is selected. It seems that the only time "No Color Management" 
is 
> available is printing an RGB file and selecting the "Color" print mode in the basic printer 
> settings box and using any of the color mode drop down choices including "Off - No 
color 
> management"
> 
> A practical problem I'm having as a result is making grayscale, ABW profiles for my 
Epson 
> printers (9800/7800):
> 
> Typically I'd use an untagged, grayscale target image to make a black & white profile (for 
> ABW, not QTR) and then select "No Color Management" and then print using ABW. Since 
> Photoshop CS4 won't allow me to chose "No Color Management" with a grayscale file I'm 
left 
> with only two choices: "Printer Manages Color" or "Photoshop Manages Color." Intuitively 
> neither choice seems a good one but, since letting Photoshop manage color is the 
wrong 
> choice, it seems letting the printer manage color wins by default.
> 
> Regards
> kd
>