Hi all,
Off topic, but related to high quality B/W printing. I am an avid QTR user, and it is all I use for prints and digital negs. I now have a good set of prints in a series, and I am starting to make a B/W photo zine. I am doing my layout in InDesign, and I want it to be printed on a high quality digital printing press like the HP Indigo. My question is how to optimally set up for this kind of printing.
1) Pictures should generally be submitted in CMYK. Given that I want the best printing range possible, what is the preferred way to do this conversion for a pure B/W picture? Clearly to get the darkest black, you want to not just generate CMYK values with the K channel set.
2) When discussing with the first print house I have been in touch with, I asked for ICC profiles for their digital printing press. I was told to just use the GRaCOL2006 profile. This seems clumsy. Do print houses not profile their individual presses/printers?
3) What else should one think about when preparing high quality BW pictures for modern booklet printing? Since this is going to cost a bunch of money, I want to make sure I do the best work on my end to get the best result.
Sorry again if this is off topic, but this is the forum I know that is most likely to have people that have made their own high quality photo book/zines for commercial printing. Please feel free to refer me to an better forum if you know one. Any help much appreciated.
Kind regards,
-Per