Hi Lynne,
Your problem sounds like one of not being able to adequately softproof what
you are printing.
I am getting great results on 4800 (2400 big brother) using ABW with Velvet.
I am using QTR create icc profile to give me a softproof of luminosity and
tone, and to handle the mapping from gamma 2.2 to the ABW driver, works
great.
You can read more about QTR create icc in this forum and the Quadtonerip
forum, and at quadtonerip.com, but you need a spectrophotometer to use QTR
create icc.
(note with this setup, for Velvet I am using ABW set on normal as that gives
a pretty much linear L* response from Gray= 0 = Lab 14 to Gray = 255 = Lab
97, I am assuming the 2400 response is very similar).
If you don't have a spectrophotometer then you can roughly simulate this
response in your image by using the QTR gray-lab profile and an adjustment
curve layer for previewing set to run from lab 14 - 97 (assumes you are
using Photoshop and have a grayscale image). May not be perfect, but this is
going to be much better than your current blind exploration.
Download and install QTR from here http://www.quadtonerip.com its shareware
so you need to pay a small fee of $50 if you decide to use (once you've
experimented).
Once installed you'll find a folder called icc in the Quadtonerip folder.
Inside the icc folder is a profile called gray-lab. Install that profile so
you can access it in Photoshop.
Assign the gray-lab profile to your image, change your image to lab,
add your first adjustment curve layer from input 0 output 3 and input 100
output 86. Ok that's roughly what your image is going to look like when its
printed. Adjust your image contrast by adding another adjustment layer
(below the first one). When you are happy with the image, turn off just
the first adjustment layer and then print as usual for ABW but set tone to
normal.
Hopefully that makes sense and good luck.
Mike
On 02/07/07, Lynne Siler Photography <lynne@...> wrote:
>
> Thanks Clayton - I did make sure the color management was off when I
> tried to print B&W. The contrast is strange in terms of how the
> values are distributed, but the color version printed fine. I used
> Advanced B&W printing, tried "darkest" in the tonal corrections to
> get some density, turned down the contrast, but it still looks
> "strange". I'm printing on Epson velvet and used the epson velvet
> best photo profile.
>
> How are the rest of you printing your fine art B&W images? I've been
> using velvet for years and am very hopeful about the neutrality I can
> get with this printer (coming from the 2200) but am dying to figure
> out the best way to get good , rich B&W prints. Any advice is
> appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Lynne Harty Siler Photography
> www.lynnesiler.com
>
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>
>
>
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