Digital Black and White Printing Options

[Brian Ellis]

I'll take your questions in order.

1. I've never used this printer. I'd suggest an Epson, all of the third party inks can be used with most Epson printers, I don't know how many if any support the Canon. If you could dedicate your 2200 to black and white that would IMHO be the way to go. If not, then an Epson 1280 would be a good and economical choice for a second, dedicated printer.

2. Since you apparently have a 2200 I'd suggest that to dip your feet in the water you try black only printing with it. Go to Clayton Jones' web site (www.cjcom.net) and read his article on black only printing. Then give it a try. The usual recommendation with black only on the 2200 is to replace the photo or matte black with an MIS Eboni black cartridge (ARC-T03048-K for the 2200). It costs about $9 and one cartridge will get you started. Black only has become pretty popular now that the former problem of little black dots in the highlights seems to have been pretty much solved and it's certainly a quick, easy, economical way to get started. Your 2200 has a profile for Epson Enhanced Matte paper (formerly known as Epson Archival Matte) and it's a popular paper to use. As you know, paper is very important with any kind of digital black and white printing, the same inks and curves will produce different results with different papers so you really need to do some experimenting once you get started.

If you don't choose this route then I'd suggest using MIS inks. Go to their web site and do a little reading. They make several different types of inks, see which sounds best for you and order it. Make sure they have curves for whatever your printer and for whatever ink you order and then buy the paper for which the curve was designed. I'm not familiar with Lyson inks. Cone has a terrible reputation for communication, bringing things untested to market, etc. Personally I wouldn't deal with them just because of the horror stories I've heard over the years. When you call MIS you speak with a real person and they've been very good about replacing defective cartridges no questions asked. Also, Paul Roark, who has developed the formulas for most of the Epson inks, is very helpful with questions. If you have the space a continuous flow system will save a lot of money but just to get started use the cartridges.

The Harrington RIP with normal color inks (i.e. your existing inks in the 2200) is another alternative if you have a Mac, otherwise you have to wait until his version for Windows comes out, which is supposed to be this summer.

3. I use Epson Enhanced Matte and Crane's Museo because these are the papers for which MIS has published curves for the variable mix inks that I use. There are tons of papers out there but you'll be restricted to using ones for which you can obtain curves (unless you can create your own curves). I haven't yet done a lot of experimenting with papers.

4. Depends on whether you want to do any color or toning of black and white prints. If not then dedicate a printer to B&W. If you do then buy a second printer. The Epson 1280 costs about $300 so it won't break you to get a second dedicated printer. I don't think it's presently possible to get a completely neutral black and white print from color inks without a RIP. Harrington's RIP supposedly accomplishes this but I have a Windows system and haven't been able to try it. I plan to try it with the 2200 when his Windows RIP becomes available. All other RIPs are too expensive for me to buy for the sole purpose of being able to make B&W prints from color inks when there are other alternatives. I have a 1280 dedicated to the MIS inks and have a 2200 for color (of which I do very little) and toning.

5. I haven't bought any books though there must be some good ones out there. I'd buy Barry Thornton's if it was available. If you have the money and time attending a workshop would be a great idea. George deWolfe teaches at the Palm Beach Photographic Workshops. It's a week long course that I took last year and it was very useful. John Paul Caponigro also is teaching one next February (February in Maine?) but it's very expensive, about $1,700 I think. Paul Roark teaches one at the Anderson Ranch Workshops but it's hard to get in, they only take something like 9 people and they use a lottery system to decide who gets in.

6. As you can see from the responses, there are lots of people doing this. It has many, many advantages over traditional darkroom work. When I started I thought I'd continue to use my darkroom for some things but I haven't been in there for at least a year except to develop film and make a few 8x10 contact prints. Apart from print quality, your time is used much more efficiently. When you think about it probably 90% of the time in a traditional darkroom is spent doing drudge work (mixing chemical, jiggling trays, waiting for the print to be fixed, cleaning up, etc.) that any idiot could do. Only 10% or so is spent doing anything really creative. With digital printing there's almost no drudge work, it's all creative time.

I'd suggest that you join the Yahoo group called DigitalBlackAndWhite:ThePrint and spend some time reading the back messages. You can learn a lot that way, especially about paper and ink combinations. I'd guess that about 75% of the people there use MIS inks, maybe another 20% use Cone, the remainder use Lyson or some other ink (not a knock on Lyson, I just don't see too many people using it).

[tim atherton]

"2. Since you apparently have a 2200 I'd suggest that to dip your feet in the water you try black only printing with it. Go to Clayton Jones' web site (www.cjcom.net) and read his article on black only printing. Then give it a try. The usual recommendation with black only on the 2200 is to replace the photo or matte black with an MIS Eboni black cartridge (ARC-T03048-K for the 2200). It costs about $9 and one cartridge will get you started. Black only has become pretty popular now that the former problem of little black dots in the highlights seems to have been pretty much solved and it's certainly a quick, easy, economical way to get started."

The black only approach is one way to get started, but despite all the hype, it's still very limited. And the little black dots are certainly still there - you lose a lot of tonal detail.

I had played with black only ages ago with an older printer. After reading all the glowing reports of the "new" approach, I thought I'd try it out again.

I ran one print using the black only approach, one using Imageprint greyscale (which is basically the black and lt back inks) and one a toned RGB print using one of Paul's curves above. Like light and day. The print happened to be a forest scene with some sky, but also birch trees with very light bark.

The RGB print was the best, with a full range of subtle detail in the "white" birch bark (and the sky) and hardly any noticeable dots, even with a loupe. Next best was the greyscale - still lots of detail, but slightly noticeable dots under the loupe. Last was black only - significant lost of detail in the bark ad the sky, big (relatively) areas of paper white with a few sparse dots in it.

While you could see the differences with a loupe, the difference was also clearly noticeable with the RGB and BO print side by side at a normal viewing distance.

Now, maybe the difference was that these were prints from 8x10 scans - with a full range of tonal changes to be obtained - if you were working from a scan from 35mm or a digital files, possible that detail wouldn't be there to lose ion the first place?

For getting started on an Epson 2200 for B&W without fiddling with different inks or buying a (fairly) expensive RIP, I'd suggest using some form of greyscale toning, like Paul's (there are others around too - usually for free - or make your own) and a good third profile for your paper that gives more linearized results than the Epson profiles ( though their new ones are pretty good). There are a few profiles out there for a small range of paper s- EEM, Photo rag etc, that are very god for low gamut prints - such as toned greyscale prints. I'll see if I can dig them up.

[JohnnyV]

Brian Ellis' post is awesome and he nails it!

Tim >There are a few profiles out there for a small range of paper s- EEM, Photo rag etc, that are very good for low gamut prints - such as toned greyscale prints. I'll see if I can dig them up.

Here's the link for both full color profiles and limited color (B+W) profiles:

http://lenscraft.com/profiles/

[Ken Lee]

...Harrington's Quadtone RIP... is currently a Mac only event but Roy is working on a Windows version as we speak.



Any idea when it will be available ?

[JohnnyV]

>Any idea when it will be available ?

End of the summer.

There is an excellent article about Roy Harrington in the latest issue of View Camera Mag.

[David Karp]

Thanks again to all for your very helpful replies. It will take me a while to wade through all the information on the websites mentioned, but a quick review of each of them indicates that I will be much better informed after spending some time researching in these locations.

Paul, your website is great. Thanks for sharing your hard work on the curves. I am going to try them out as soon as I can get to my friends 2200.

Marco, thanks for your comments. It looks like time to cross Lyson off my list. If help is needed, its nice to know if it will be available (or not). Similarly, I will do the same with Piezography. I sent them an e-mail days ago. Still no response. Perhaps it is moot, because some of the answers here emphasize printing in colors with curves, RIPs, etc. to obtain quality inkjet prints, rather than dedicating a printer to black and white only.

Brian, thanks for the detailed response. From my research and your response, it seems like MIS is the way to go if I do decide to dedicate a printer to black and white. I also think that black only is worth a try, if only just for interest's sake. Again, I will try this when I get to my friend's 2200.

Tim, thanks for the summary of your experience with the various methods. It is very helpful. Perhaps it is time to give that 2200 another chance.

I really appreciate the help from all of you.

[Kirk Gittings]

By the wat, nice image Paul.

[Leonard Metcalf]

Paul,

Thanks a million for you curves... I am getting wonderful prints from my epson 7600 printer... I tried the black only option, and became frustrated as I had to keep changing the settings when switching between colour and black and white... and I wasn't getting WYSIWYG (if I was a dedicated black and white printer I would have set the printer up with a dedicated black and white inkset)

Many thanks for your post, and the article and downloads at your website...

Kind regards,

Len