Becky wrote:

> 'm struggling to get good black and white prints from my epson 2100. I have
> a profile for my printer with the paper I'm using (Epson Semi Gloss).

There can be two possible issues at play here:

1) You really do have a colourcast, probably due to an inferior
printerprofile ie: One that doesn't describe your printer accurately. If you
use a generic profile this is hardly surprising, but if you have a custom
profile it could be because the profile just isn't good enough, or that your
printer have changed since it was made.

2) You can print a pretty good black and white, but it only appears neutral
in daylight. This is due to metamerism (www.pixl.dk > resources > Metamerism
) - the "issue" of substrates changing appearance under different light.
Frequently B&W prints from a 2100 using an RGB profil (for the Epson driver)
seems magenta in tungsten, and slightly, undefinable, pretty neutral, but
with just a hint of something else.


> Colour
> prints work well with this.

The eye is much less succeptible to colour than to greyscale.

To put numbers on, most colours seems acceptable until they are off by a
delat E of around 3, neutrals seem unacceptable (not grey) when they reach
dE 0.5 off target.

> My laptop has been profiled (as much as it can
> be) so what I'm seeing on screen should be right.
> 
> I'm making black and white pics from colour by using the channel mixer and
> on screen they look good. But the prints are coming with a colour cast of
> green and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Is it that I need a seperate
> printer profile for black and white images?

It depends on what the problem is. If you use a RIP that allows you control
over linearization of all the inks (and you have the necessary kit or hire
someone who does), you can build profiles in a different manner which can
almost eliminate metamerism.
For example I have an Epson 4000 that can print B&W so it looks like a
photographic B&W - and is much more stable than both a Lambda print and
offset. This is profiled through a RIP and the results are vastly superior
to RGB profiles. It is, of course, also much more complicated and time
consuming to profile and therefore more expensive. And you need a RIP on top
of that...

Best Regards,
Thomas Holm / Pixl Aps

- Photographer, Educator, Colour Management Consultant & Seminar speaker
- Remote Profiling Service (Output ICC profiles)
- www.pixl.dk � Email: th[AT]pixl.dk
-- 



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