Mike Chaney's Tech Corner
March 28, 2024, 06:27:38 PM *
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
News: Qimage registration expired? New lifetime licenses are only $59.99!
 
   Home   Help Search Login Register  

Professional Photo Printing Software for Windows
Print with
Qimage and see what you've been missing!
Pages: [1]
  Print  
Author Topic: "WARM" B&W printing  (Read 4524 times)
b60q3flhba29
Newbie
*
Posts: 11


View Profile Email
« on: August 13, 2014, 03:47:50 AM »

Hello all,
I did a search before posting, I did not find an answer to this, but feel free to point me to the appropriate post if already discussed.

I am using the Epson "Ultra Premium Presentation Matte", obviously with the MK ink.
When I print B&W (without enabling the ABW driver) Qimage does a very good (at least to my eye) job with the smoothness of the blacks, but I have noticed that it also uses some of the colors in the gray/light gray areas, to keep the image more neutral I think.

However, under certain lighting conditions and certain shades of grey, I can see a small color cast, typically towards the blue.

Is there a way to tell QImage to not strictly use only the MK, LK, LLK inks ? I do know and realize that this will give a warm tone to the image, but I'm OK with it.

EDIT: also the Epson ABW driver does the same, and in terms of actual print quality QImage is, in my opinion, superior to QuadTone

Thank you very much

Marco Brambilla
« Last Edit: August 13, 2014, 03:51:50 AM by b60q3flhba29 » Logged
Ernst Dinkla
Sr. Member
****
Posts: 410


View Profile Email
« Reply #1 on: August 13, 2014, 08:26:58 AM »

The two can not be compared. QTR is another driver/RIP and should be compared to the Epson driver. Qimage can not influence the black generation (substitution of CMY composite grey mixes with MK, PK + LK + LLK) in the Epson driver it has to work with. What would be nice is QTR being reshaped to a Windows driver and then QTR could replace the normal Epson driver and used to gether with Qimage. I have uttered that request more often in the Quadtone forum.

Some printer drivers like the ones for the HP Z models have a total black generation of CMY composite grey mixes, so no color ink is used when RGB is neutral R=G=B or a greyscale file is used, both in Color and in B&W mode. The MK, PK, Grey, Light Grey inks are already made neutral so no extra color inks are needed in the print to create neutrality. A bit simplified; it also depends on profiling taking into account paper white or not. Qimage can work with the HP Z printers.

With a custom B&W inkset in a 4 or 6 ink printer and custom B&W profiles based on Photoshop RGB partitioning curves a normal Epson/HP/Canon driver + Qimage can achieve what you want. I have  a 4 ink HP running like that. Can not print color with that one though.

The best you can do is create a custom profile that is already slightly warm so the slightly warm Epson monochrome inks fit best and keep that printer calibrated/profiled in time. You may need a profile editor for that or use the advanced B&W settings to add some warmth to a normal profiled workflow. That said any B&W workflow with some color inks in the mix tends to be less stable. What you also might see is bronzing, an issue that can not be solved with changing ink color mixes. Better ink compatible papers can reduce that effect, gloss enhancers or varnishes are less effective then.

--
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
April 2014, 600+ inkjet media white spectral plots.
Logged
b60q3flhba29
Newbie
*
Posts: 11


View Profile Email
« Reply #2 on: August 13, 2014, 07:00:46 PM »

Thank you very much Ernst for the very detailed explanation.
For now my B&W printing is not such to require a dedicated printer and QTR is above my current expertise level (and time I can dedicate to it)

Appreciate the help
Marco Brambilla
Logged
Pages: [1]
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!
Security updates 2022 by ddisoftware, Inc.