Digital BW, The Print

Is monitor calibration/profiling necessary for black and white 
digital printing and photoshop processing of scanned black and white 
negatives?

Obviously a must for color work, just wondering if necessary to 
spend the time and expense to calibrate my new Mac display for BW 
work only.

Thanks

On Jan 10, 2005, at 1:57 PM, jsigmonmd24 wrote:

>
>
>
> Is monitor calibration/profiling necessary for black and white
> digital printing and photoshop processing of scanned black and white
> negatives?
>
> Obviously a must for color work, just wondering if necessary to
> spend the time and expense to calibrate my new Mac display for BW
> work only.

A calibrated display is a must for all imaging work. If it's a brand 
new Apple display, don't bother tweaking the RGB channels, just set an 
appropriate white point and gamma. If you don't have good reason to go 
otherwise, try 6500k @ 2.2 gamma. For B&W, gamma will be your most 
important setting.

-R

Roger,

Thanks for the info. 

Jason

>Is monitor calibration/profiling necessary for black and white 
>digital printing and photoshop processing of scanned black and white 
>negatives?

>Obviously a must for color work, just wondering if necessary to 
>spend the time and expense to calibrate my new Mac display for BW 
>work only.

I used Adobe Gamma for quite a while and then used SpyderPro2 to calibrate
my monitor.  For the B&W I do, I don't think the SpyderPro2 is worth much.
I see almost no difference. 

The more important factor is getting the relative densities to look like the
print.  For this, the calibration software does not do a very good job.
I've use a Photoshop preview or "soft proof" (click on View then Proof
Setup) procedure that seems to work better than the other alternatives.  I
have the procedure posted at
http://home1.gte.net/res09aij/Monitor-Profiling.htm .

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com