Digital BW, The Print

Attended the Epson Print Academy last weekend. It was a several hour 
presentation validating inkjet printing (especially using Epson 
equipment)that was peppered with valuable tidbits. I found the 
seminar was a bit basic and if you're really into this forum then you 
would probably find it a bit basic too. The question and answer 
period at the end was most valuable and the speaker stayed as long as 
necessary to answer any and all questions -- this ran an additional 
two hours since there were maybe two hundred people there (in 
Phoenix). Worth the money in my opinion. Really nice, knowledgeable 
and helpful folks. 

Here's the big one I learned about the 2200: print all your B&W stuff 
in the RGB mode -- don't, I repeat, don't convert to greyscale in 
Photoshop before printing. It has to do with the way the 2200 driver 
uses inks in RGB vs. Greyscale.

So, I immediately sped home and fired up the computer and the 2200. I 
converted a color image to monochrome using the channel mixer 
technique (staying in RGB) and printed the photo on Epson Premium 
Semigloss paper--I know, I know, its not photo rag--and by golly, no 
metamerism. And I mean NO metamerism. I then tried another one, but 
this time after the channel mixer I switched over to the Duotone mode 
and tinted the image, converted back to RGB, then printed. Again, no 
metamerism and a beautiful warm tinted photo. Yes!

I don't like the way pigment based Ultrachrome inks affect the 
surface sheen on resin paper. When the ink is laid down it takes on a 
glossier sheen than the paper, making the image kind of look like a 
decal when the light hits it just right. But I found a solution to 
that. I sprayed the photo with two very light coats of Lumijet 
ImageShield waiting a few minutes between coats. This acts as a 
sealer for what is to follow, or you could just stop right there 
since the ImageShield by itself gets rid of about 90 percent of the 
sheen difference problem. I let that dry about an hour then 
airbrushed on one wet coat of Hydrocote Satin thinned with distilled 
water and amended with a bit of Hydrocote FloAyd. If anyone wants me 
to go into detail on techniques for doing this let me know and I'll 
make another post. The end result is a photo that looks exactly as 
if it were printed with dye inks, that is, there is a consistant 
sheen across the surface, and did I mention, NO metamerism. A bonus 
here is that ImageShield contains a UV inhibitor so the photo should 
be very longlasting. Gonna try the RGB thing on EEM next. Hope it 
works, but I'm doubtful.

Are there any other settings you need to adjust to get this to work?
Because printing a BW image in RGB mode here on my 2100 produces an
image with a strong color cast and metamerism. I've tried almost all
possible combinations of printer-setting on BW images in RGB mode in
mye search for the best results, and so far all of them had color-cats
and metamerism.

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "sanfo2003
<SandyCornelius@c...>" <SandyCornelius@c...> wrote:

> Attended the Epson Print Academy last weekend. It was a several hour 
> presentation validating inkjet printing (especially using Epson 
> equipment)that was peppered with valuable tidbits. I found the 
> seminar was a bit basic and if you're really into this forum then you 
> would probably find it a bit basic too. The question and answer 
> period at the end was most valuable and the speaker stayed as long as 
> necessary to answer any and all questions -- this ran an additional 
> two hours since there were maybe two hundred people there (in 
> Phoenix). Worth the money in my opinion. Really nice, knowledgeable 
> and helpful folks. 
> 
> Here's the big one I learned about the 2200: print all your B&W stuff 
> in the RGB mode -- don't, I repeat, don't convert to greyscale in 
> Photoshop before printing. It has to do with the way the 2200 driver 
> uses inks in RGB vs. Greyscale.
> 
> So, I immediately sped home and fired up the computer and the 2200. I 
> converted a color image to monochrome using the channel mixer 
> technique (staying in RGB) and printed the photo on Epson Premium 
> Semigloss paper--I know, I know, its not photo rag--and by golly, no 
> metamerism. And I mean NO metamerism. I then tried another one, but 
> this time after the channel mixer I switched over to the Duotone mode 
> and tinted the image, converted back to RGB, then printed. Again, no 
> metamerism and a beautiful warm tinted photo. Yes!
> 
> I don't like the way pigment based Ultrachrome inks affect the 
> surface sheen on resin paper. When the ink is laid down it takes on a 
> glossier sheen than the paper, making the image kind of look like a 
> decal when the light hits it just right. But I found a solution to 
> that. I sprayed the photo with two very light coats of Lumijet 
> ImageShield waiting a few minutes between coats. This acts as a 
> sealer for what is to follow, or you could just stop right there 
> since the ImageShield by itself gets rid of about 90 percent of the 
> sheen difference problem. I let that dry about an hour then 
> airbrushed on one wet coat of Hydrocote Satin thinned with distilled 
> water and amended with a bit of Hydrocote FloAyd. If anyone wants me 
> to go into detail on techniques for doing this let me know and I'll 
> make another post. The end result is a photo that looks exactly as 
> if it were printed with dye inks, that is, there is a consistant 
> sheen across the surface, and did I mention, NO metamerism. A bonus 
> here is that ImageShield contains a UV inhibitor so the photo should 
> be very longlasting. Gonna try the RGB thing on EEM next. Hope it 
> works, but I'm doubtful.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sanfo2003 <SandyCornelius@...> 
<snip> 
> So, I immediately sped home and fired up the computer and the 2200. I 
> converted a color image to monochrome using the channel mixer 
> technique (staying in RGB) and printed the photo on Epson Premium 
> Semigloss paper--I know, I know, its not photo rag--and by golly, no 
> metamerism.
<snip>

Do you mean you printed this using all the Epson color inks (not just
black)?

Thanks,
Ed
http://lightandsilver.com

Hi Sandy,

Sounds great but I am not convinced....

Try the following:
Take a B&W stepwedge, Convert to RGB.
Print on Epson 2200 at 2880 dpi, Color.

Results will be: You will get all kind of color shifts along the stepwedge.
So the result will not be a neutral grey printed stepwedge which it should be.

Best regards,
Jo Brunenberg
http://www.jobrunenberg.com


Attended the Epson Print Academy last weekend. It was a several hour 
presentation validating inkjet printing (especially using Epson 
equipment)that was peppered with valuable tidbits. I found the 
seminar was a bit basic and if you're really into this forum then you 
would probably find it a bit basic too. The question and answer 
period at the end was most valuable and the speaker stayed as long as 
necessary to answer any and all questions -- this ran an additional 
two hours since there were maybe two hundred people there (in 
Phoenix). Worth the money in my opinion. Really nice, knowledgeable 
and helpful folks. 

Here's the big one I learned about the 2200: print all your B&W stuff 
in the RGB mode -- don't, I repeat, don't convert to greyscale in 
Photoshop before printing. It has to do with the way the 2200 driver 
uses inks in RGB vs. Greyscale.

So, I immediately sped home and fired up the computer and the 2200. I 
converted a color image to monochrome using the channel mixer 
technique (staying in RGB) and printed the photo on Epson Premium 
Semigloss paper--I know, I know, its not photo rag--and by golly, no 
metamerism. And I mean NO metamerism. I then tried another one, but 
this time after the channel mixer I switched over to the Duotone mode 
and tinted the image, converted back to RGB, then printed. Again, no 
metamerism and a beautiful warm tinted photo. Yes!

I don't like the way pigment based Ultrachrome inks affect the 
surface sheen on resin paper. When the ink is laid down it takes on a 
glossier sheen than the paper, making the image kind of look like a 
decal when the light hits it just right. But I found a solution to 
that. I sprayed the photo with two very light coats of Lumijet 
ImageShield waiting a few minutes between coats. This acts as a 
sealer for what is to follow, or you could just stop right there 
since the ImageShield by itself gets rid of about 90 percent of the 
sheen difference problem. I let that dry about an hour then 
airbrushed on one wet coat of Hydrocote Satin thinned with distilled 
water and amended with a bit of Hydrocote FloAyd. If anyone wants me 
to go into detail on techniques for doing this let me know and I'll 
make another post. The end result is a photo that looks exactly as 
if it were printed with dye inks, that is, there is a consistant 
sheen across the surface, and did I mention, NO metamerism. A bonus 
here is that ImageShield contains a UV inhibitor so the photo should 
be very longlasting. Gonna try the RGB thing on EEM next. Hope it 
works, but I'm doubtful.

_______________________________________________
Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

---  "Jo Brunenberg" <jobnl@e...> wrote:
> ...Try the following:
> Take a B&W stepwedge, Convert to RGB.
> Print on Epson 2200 at 2880 dpi, Color.
> 
> Results will be: You will get all kind of color shifts along the 
stepwedge.
> So the result will not be a neutral grey printed stepwedge which it 
should be.

Hi Jo,
I tried what you suggested and yup, you're right, got some 
unacceptable color shifts along the 21 step wedge on EEM paper, and I 
thought that might happen with EEM as noted on my original post. But 
tried the wedge on Epson resin paper (premium semigloss) and got a 
nice neutral wedge that is virtually identical to the wedge I printed 
using Pieziography selenium quadtones on my 1280 and no metamerism. I 
say "virtually" because after carefully analyzing the wedge I picked 
up an ever so slight magenta shift only at 35 percent black that is 
so small its not noticable in a photo. I think it would be easy to 
neutralize with maybe a one unit curve tweak, and one unit may be too 
large. Even silver halide prints have a microscopic bit of color in 
them -- they're not perfectly greyscale. Also, if a tint is added 
that tiny shift at 35 percent becomes totally invisible. I guess 
everyone has to draw their own line somewhere on what is acceptable 
quality and then go out and take some pictures. Even Ansel Adams had 
to say at some point, "Heck, that's good enough." But if I hear 
comments like, "nice tinted print" when I didn't tint the print then 
its time to move the line.

I'll leave it to someone smarter than me to explain why shifts occur 
on EEM on not resin paper. I suppose it has something to do with 
metamerism and the scattering of reflected light. I profiled both 
papers identically using an EyeOne spectrophotometer and Gregtag 
MacBeth ProfileMaker 4.0

Thanks for your reply.

-Sandy C.

"danielstaver <daniel@p...>" <daniel@p...> wrote:
> Are there any other settings you need to adjust to get this to work?
> ....

My post only applied to Epson resin papers (premium semigloss and 
luster). Printing on EEM or cotton papers seem to result in color 
shifts across a greyscale wedge as you describe. However, I can get 
Epson resin papers to print neutral across the wedge with no 
metamerism, at least on my 2200.

First of all, printing B&W images in the RGB mode requires a spot-on 
custom profile for your specific printer, paper, ink and dpi 
combination; and your entire workflow should be color managed (color 
managing my workflow also helps to keep me from going crazy). 
Secondly, make sure you print in the Relative Colormetric rendering 
intent if you're using Photoshop. Other than those two things the 
setup is conventional.

Hope this helps. Take care

-Sandy C.