"Color management" in PS or Advanced B/W driver [Mac, R2400]
2005-06-03 by Sonny Taylor
I wonder if anyone has any experience with the Advanced B/W driver, with respect to color management in PS? I am testing my R2400 and am trying to resolve a statement by Jeff Schewe in his excellent article in PhotoshopNews: http://photoshopnews.com/2005/05/16/epson-r2400-and-ultrachrome-k3-ink-report/ where he states: "Printing out of Photoshop CS2, I used the Print with Preview dialog to set up the Photoshop to Epson driver hand off. Since the Advanced B&W Mode operates completely outside of normal color management parameters, in Photoshop you must turn off any color management". I wonder if I am doing something wrong. I am printing a B/W strip posterized to 31 segments. The first segment is 100% black, the second 97% black, and so on. Prior to reading Jeff's article, I did my tests with Color Management ON in PS and as I have always done with color; and the results with the Advanced B/W driver are excellent, except for some difficulty in differentiating the 100 and 97% (they are both black, even though I can see a difference on my monitor; with a curve in PS, I can slightly open up the 100-97%). There is very little change in the shadows using Shadow Tonality in the Advanced B/W driver, from -25 to +25. After reading Jeff's article, I turned off CM, passing control to the Advanced B/W driver. The strips became all black for many more segments. I could not open them up using the driver. Am I missing something from Jeff's article? It seems that CM ON in PS still gives much better results than I can achieve by the driver alone. Is there a better way to open up the deep blacks? Any comments will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Sonny