'True' black and white printing

[Fate]

Hey all,

I was wondering how you can print of a black and white image without the blue tint that i seem to get when i try. I want just a simple black and white

Thanks in advance,

Fate

 

[Big Mike]

What are you using to print them?

 

[Fate]

A printer sorry... *shoots self*

Um its an Epson Photo 830

 

[Big Mike]

I don't know about that specific printer...but typical color printers don't do so well with B&W.

There are inkjet printers that are more suited to B&W printing...but they have many different inks/cartridges. Some even have several types of black.

You might be able to get better results with yours, if you calibrate it right. Try Google... here is an article I found http://www.vividlight.com/Articles/2215.htm

 

[photo gal]

Fate my suggestion would be to mark the black option in your preferences prior to printing....it should be an option for your printer! I use epson and that is what I do to get rid of the blue tinting...hope this helps! : ) You could pm me if you need help finding the option!

 

[Fate]

Thanks guys

 

[Torus34]

If yout printer has a black and three colored ink cartridges, just pull out the color cartridges.

 

[craig]

My Stylus Photo 960 prints fairly neutral. Confirm that you are using the correct print driver. Photo gal pointed out the print settings. It is important to know all of those. Convert the file to greyscale in your image editing program.

 

[DocFrankenstein]

Use silver halide printer

Seriously - there are printers which accept gray inks to give "real" BW prints. Look into later epson and canon models.

Silver halide is cheaper and lasts longer for sure.

 

[thebeginning]

wait do you mean silver halide paper as in 'normal' printing, or are you actually saying to use silver halide inks?? odd...

 

['Daniel']

What's weird with a print of mine is I had a black and white image but there was a distinct tint of green on some of the plants. This has been desaturated and had a gradient map black to white on it btw.

 

[JonathanM]

My HP photsmart has the option of replacing the colour cartridge with a tri "colour" black/grey one. Not used it as the images, while not true B&W are close enough for my needs.

One thought, are you desaturating or grayscaling digital images? and are you adjusting the contrast as well?

 

[DocFrankenstein]

wait do you mean silver halide paper as in 'normal' printing, or are you actually saying to use silver halide inks?? odd...

Sorry, I meant as in "normal" printing...

Although it would be cool to have a laser printer expose your silver halide ilford. :lmao:

 

[Alpha]

The property of an image changing color depending on the temperature of the light it's under is called Metamerism. It's very common with black and white inkjet prints, and is caused by composite blacks. Composite blacks are made by combining color inks to make black. Hmmm...you think...Okay, well I'll just tell the printer to only use black ink. Bad idea. If the printer only lays down black ink, then you literally lose all tones in your print. Okay, so now your choices are between a black and white print that turns magenta or green depending on what kind of light it's in, or a print that has no tones. Crappy situation to be in. There's really only one answer for acceptable prints. By acceptable, I mean good tones and negligible metamerism levels. The answer is to use a good quality printer with at least four print heads (cmyk or better), and a black-only ink set.

If you insist on using your stock inks, you have some serious color profiling to do. Additionally, I've found that ilford inkjet papers for pigment based printers tend to produce slightly lower levels of metamerism than epson papers. For more information, see Max's Digital Darkroom Guide http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=44060

 

[markc]

Using just black doesn't work well. You won't get metamerism, but the only way to make grey is to space out the black dots.

As mentioned, the best way to make digital black and white prints is with a grey inkset.

http://www.piezography.com/
http://www.inksupply.com/bwpage.cfm

I use Piezography and also have a Paul Roark print. Both methods blow away most b&w from color ink prints.