Digital BW, The Print

After recently purchasing an Epson PM G4500 printer I am now trying out
prints. The colour prints look great, but of course work needs to be done to
refine them to my preference. The question I have is that I converted a
night time image, colour, taken with a Nikon D300 from colour to B&W. On the
monitor of this macbook pro, the image is distinctly B&W but when I print
it, the grey tones are showing distinct blues with hints of purple and
perhaps green. Unfortunately the manual is in Japanese so I cannot read
through if there is a solution to this problem. Advise on what sorts of
modifications need to be made to print in B&W please. (Apologies if this is
a simple question I should be able to solve myself.)

Toodle-pip,

Allan.

Hi Allan,

If you Google "Epson PM G4500", you'll get a bunch of info, possibly answers to your questions...

http://www.google.com/search?q=Epson+PM+G4500&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Can you direct the printer to print grayscale/Black only ???

Good luck!!

John

From: Allan Sutherland 
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2010 9:50 PM
To: Digital Black&White 
Subject: [Digital BW] Epson PM G4500 - printing B&W


  
After recently purchasing an Epson PM G4500 printer I am now trying out
prints. The colour prints look great, but of course work needs to be done to
refine them to my preference. The question I have is that I converted a
night time image, colour, taken with a Nikon D300 from colour to B&W. On the
monitor of this macbook pro, the image is distinctly B&W but when I print
it, the grey tones are showing distinct blues with hints of purple and
perhaps green. Unfortunately the manual is in Japanese so I cannot read
through if there is a solution to this problem. Advise on what sorts of
modifications need to be made to print in B&W please. (Apologies if this is
a simple question I should be able to solve myself.)

Toodle-pip,

Allan.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

On 26/08/2010 12:17, "John K Stacy" <John_K_Stacy@...> wrote:

> Hi Allan,
> 
> If you Google "Epson PM G4500", you'll get a bunch of info, possibly answers
> to your questions...
> 
> http://www.google.com/search?q=Epson+PM+G4500&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.m
> ozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
> 
> Can you direct the printer to print grayscale/Black only ???
> 
> Good luck!!
> 
> John

Thank you John,

The problem is that Epson produce printers for the Japanese market with
different modelling that those in the US or elsewhere. Thus all of the
information is in Japanese, which makes it difficult to parse, for me, as
the google results above indicate.

I tried setting the printer to grey, but it made little difference. Hints of
colour are strong in the shadows.

Thank you,

Toodle-pip,

Allan.

Hi Allan,

This sounds like the perennial problem of printing neutral B&W using wide-gamut (colour) inks. Your grey tones are made up of coloured ink, and unless your printer profile is very good you will not get neutral greys. I believe that most modern printers when set to "Grayscale" will still use coloured ink to make grey. They may use a bit less colour but it's still not guaranteed to be neutral.

I assume, although you don't say, that you are letting the printer manage colours and therefore using the Epson generic profile. This problem is often solved, or at least greatly reduced, by having a custom profile for your particular printer/ink/paper. Might well make your colour rendering closer to your taste too.

Roger

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Allan Sutherland <allan@...> wrote:

>
> After recently purchasing an Epson PM G4500 printer I am now trying out
> prints. The colour prints look great, but of course work needs to be done to
> refine them to my preference. The question I have is that I converted a
> night time image, colour, taken with a Nikon D300 from colour to B&W. On the
> monitor of this macbook pro, the image is distinctly B&W but when I print
> it, the grey tones are showing distinct blues with hints of purple and
> perhaps green. Unfortunately the manual is in Japanese so I cannot read
> through if there is a solution to this problem. Advise on what sorts of
> modifications need to be made to print in B&W please. (Apologies if this is
> a simple question I should be able to solve myself.)
> 
> Toodle-pip,
> 
> Allan.
>

On Aug 25, 2010, at 11:29 PM, Allan Sutherland wrote:

> The problem is that Epson produce printers for the Japanese market with
> different modelling that those in the US or elsewhere. Thus all of the
> information is in Japanese, which makes it difficult to parse, for me, as
> the google results above indicate.

Yes, I own a couple of Japanese-only Epson models, and downloading drivers for them from the Epson Japan website can be quite a challenge!
> 
> I tried setting the printer to grey, but it made little difference. Hints of
> colour are strong in the shadows.

This is inevitable for printer models which do not include gray inks. Even if you custom profile the printer to get a reasonably neutral result under one light condition, the print will change color under other lights. So you really can't make satisfactory black and white prints with printers which do not have multiple gray inks.

C. David Tobie
Global Product Technology Manager
Digital Imaging & Home Theater
CDTobie@...


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Datacolor
www.datacolor.com/Spyder3





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Thank you, and Roger, for your advice. Does this mean that it is necessary
to buy a printer devoted to B&W printing to obtain the image quality
normally found with B&W photographic prints?

Toodle-pip,

Allan.

On 26/08/2010 23:53, "C D Tobie" <CDTobie@...> wrote:

> 
> On Aug 25, 2010, at 11:29 PM, Allan Sutherland wrote:
> 
>> The problem is that Epson produce printers for the Japanese market with
>> different modelling that those in the US or elsewhere. Thus all of the
>> information is in Japanese, which makes it difficult to parse, for me, as
>> the google results above indicate.
> 
> Yes, I own a couple of Japanese-only Epson models, and downloading drivers for
> them from the Epson Japan website can be quite a challenge!
>> 
>> I tried setting the printer to grey, but it made little difference. Hints of
>> colour are strong in the shadows.
> 
> This is inevitable for printer models which do not include gray inks. Even if
> you custom profile the printer to get a reasonably neutral result under one
> light condition, the print will change color under other lights. So you really
> can't make satisfactory black and white prints with printers which do not have
> multiple gray inks.
>