b&w printing with 4 color printer

PS
Posted By
pat sandler
Jul 16, 2003
Views
410
Replies
7
Status
Closed
I am needing to make some reasonably good 8×10 black and white prints from scanned photographs. I tried every possible combination of color space, print mode etc. with an epson C82 printer. When using rgb mode and color inks, even with the "monochrome" option, I get major color tints and metamerism ranging from green to purple.
So I went to grayscale, gamma 2.2 with black ink only, which got me much closer. However, I note that the printer goes into a faster mode with black only, which I can’t apparently control, and thus, the prints, while of a very good quality overall, have vertical lines running down the right hand side. I’m not sure if this is a result of the increased printing speed or something else. I have hesitated to use my other printer with generations pigment ink in it. Any ideas or experience with this problem/printer? Thanks in advance.

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BL
Bill Lamp
Jul 16, 2003
An idea that might help but never having even seen one of those printers turned on….

Are the lines solid or do they seem to be more a series of dots?

Do they line up with the little spiked wheel thingies? If so, besides the "pizza cutter effect" one or more may be slightly "sticky" on the shaft causing it to drag and slice/rip.

Stay in RGB mode grey but desaturate the picture. It is possible that something is sneaking through that this will fix.

I’ll give it a try with my C-62, used for everything except pictures, when I get back to the house and report back what I find.

Bill
PS
pat sandler
Jul 16, 2003
Don’t see my reply here, so I’ll try again. Thanks Bill for your input. I don’t think it’s pizza wheels. The lines are clear. I’ll try the desaturate again with that combo. Thanks..Pat
DM
dave milbut
Jul 16, 2003
does your printer driver have a black and white mode?
PS
pat sandler
Jul 16, 2003
It has a monotone mode under photo-enhanced, which I believe I tried (the hour was late)with all combos of rgb/grayscale etc. But I’ll go back and try that. I think the basic problem is that with the dura bright inks, if I use the color inks, I get a color cast in the image, and with black ink only, the print quality gets messed up.
BL
Bill Lamp
Jul 17, 2003
OK, with a C62 and a color image. O bright one. A butterfly on a yellow flower.

I added a hue/saturation adjustment filter, ran the saturation to zero. then merged the layers.

The file was RGB mode with zero saturation. Printer was set to "Best Photo"

It printed grey. NO color

As the printer uses the same ink type, it looks like saturation in RGB is the key point.

Bill
DM
dave milbut
Jul 17, 2003
O bright one

LOL!
B
Bernie
Jul 17, 2003
Pat,

…if I use the color inks, I get a color cast in the image, and with black ink only, the print quality gets messed up.

As far as I know, that holds true for all Epson printers, with the exception of the Epson Stylus Photo 2200/2100 models.

I know that with my venerable Epson Stylus Photo (no model number, ‘cuz it was the first) choosing the black-ink-only mode causes noticeable black ink dot dithering and color casts appear when I print a Grayscale image in the Color mode of my printer.

You can get a smoother rendetion of B/W using all your inks and Epson does a remarkable job of blending them to shades of gray, but there always seems to be a slight green or magenta cast to the result.

If you are determined to get the best possible approximation to a grayscale image, first convert it to the Grayscale image mode in Photoshop, which completely de-colorizes it. Then convert that image back to RGB. Then print a test image (it can be smaller than your intended final print to save paper) to see what your color cast is. Then, back in Photoshop, apply an offsetting color cast. By "offsetting" I mean if your observed color cast is green, apply a slight magenta cast to your image in Photoshop. If your print showed a slight purple cast, apply a slight green color cast to your Photoshop image.

This can be a repetitive trial-and-error process to "home in on" a cast-free result, so you need to develop a Photoshop technique of printing color strips, to save paper and ink. I don’t use a lower grade of paper for the test prints because the paper type can influence the color cast. I usually use Epson Photo Paper (S041141), although I intend to get some of Epson’s higher quality glossy photo paper (I forget its exact name) for even smoother prints. But whatever paper you use, use the same paper for your tests as for the final print.

So as not to waste good paper I re-feed the same test sheet back several times, placing the "test strips" at different non-overlapping places on the sheet. In other words, in Photoshop set up an 8×10 pure white Canvas and then move your smaller B/W test image to different spots on that canvas. Having the test image on a layer and setting up a custom grid spacing like 1-inch can help with this rearrangement of your test image.

If you have your color management set up right the pure white won’t print at all. If your test image isn’t too large, you can get a lot of different tests on the same sheet of paper. I don’t make my test images too small, because I want to get a representative sample. As a labor-saving device, you could save an Action that created the "magic" color cast that gives you a good B/W print so that, for that particular paper type, you can repeat the cast needed to cancel out your printer’s color ink cast.

If this is all too much trouble for you, get an Epson 2200 printer. With its two black inks, regular black and "light" black, it can print nice B/W prints.

— Burton —

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