Printing RGB B&W with lulu.com (Digital Print on Demand)

[Frank Petronio]

I just got a test book back from lulu.com and overall am very pleased at the quality of a $17 80-page perfect bound softcover book (7.5 inches square). The color repro, from Adobe RGB tagged RGB .tifs in the master PDF, is really quite nice. And the black and white, made from greyscale images converted to RGB as the last step before placing into the InDesign master file, are basically good, with deep black blacks and nice warm neutral color in tungsten room light.

However, in daylight the black & whites are very cool blue and the fine highlight gradations are marginal, with the start of minor banding and a hint of a Cyan halo popping up in the bands. I don't think this is unreasonable for a $17 digital POD book BUT I would like to minimize it as much as possible. So my question is: Has anyone tried taking their Greyscale images, converting to RGB, and then adjusting the Hue/Saturation to create a warmer, almost sepia-toned image in order to "cheat" the end product? I am hoping it would show the images as neutrals or warm in daylight viewing and probably more warm-sepia in tungsten viewing.

FWIW in the Greyscales converted to RGB I see some MY dots in the highlights, although I think there are definitely more C and K dots.

As for the banding, I think I will try to selectively deepen a few of the highlights that create the banding halos so they carry a little more of the Cyan/Black mix through the highlights, so you avoid that last step where the Cyan dots expire and create a halo. Any arguements with that?

Thanks to Gordon and others in anticipation.

Also, for the curious, I tried a straight greyscale book too -- they are dirt cheap, like $5 -- but the stock is like a good comic book paper -- nice warm uncoated -- and my darker images didn't look half bad. But the higher key images blocked up, like a newspaper repro (not that bad tho). I think if you played around it could be a nice promo, although it will never be "fine."

And, in the RGB book, I actually tried a 33% screen of black type and it looks perfectly fine, so compared to earlier reports about lulu.com's quality that I found online, this seems to have been resolved.

Finally, it was really fast service, I ordered it online at 8pm Tuesday and in my mailbox Saturday at Noon. I noted that they printed it in 20 miles away in Rochester, so that saved at least a day in the mail, but still...

I am still grinning that I can print a nice hefty little book for $17 or a 1/2-inch thick hardcover for $28 or so. I want to do about 40 portfolios this way once I get it nailed. No more crappy mylar sleeves or any of those silly $300 leather portfolio books

Now if I put all the cute girls into one book I could probably become a POD version of Taschen and sell fine art erotica... where are those f-ing model releases?

[Ed Richards]

Try ordering another one and see if looks the same, esp., the black and white. The Rangefinder forum guys have been trying to do lulu books and found them highly variable. My experience has been the same - they are not consistent, and black and white is a bigger problem than color. They also have some quality control issues - I did the layout and graphics for a book on disaster prep my wife wrote http://www.dr-kate.com, went throught a series of proof copies to make sure everything was right, then ordered 300 and turned it over for global distribution. Between the proof and the big order, they screwed up a file and the text on the (dark grey) spine turned from white to black. We are still discussing that, with the "well you must have changed the files" being countered with the "I have the proof book in my hand with the same version number on it." Since this is a couple of thousand dollars worth of books, I am not amused.

[Gordon Moat]

Hello Frank,

I think Lulu.com are still working on getting things better. What is frustrating to me is finding out what digital press they are running, and what paper stock. Knowing those two things could make a huge difference in preparing images.

Variability is a given with any digital press, and any company claiming otherwise is not doing proper maintenance and calibration. Talk to any engineers at the companies that make these, and they will tell you that they need to be calibrated often as part of normal operations. I know one local digital press running that calibrates every two hours as a routine. Most of these systems are toner and oil based, with the oil often set by heat during the run.

I have now seen several sample books off digital press. With only B/W images, I still think using a Black (K) ink only run will work better in most situations. When you can get better specifications, and send in CMYK files, then setting up a Cyan and Black run for cool B/W images, or Magenta and Black run for warmer B/W images, will give better results. Yellow with Black is something that should be avoided. Recall that when sending RGB files, the Black component comes from a little bit of each Red, Green, or Blue Channel, meaning your control of Black ink output is limited compared to working in CMYK. Unfortunately, when your only choices are sending RGB or Greyscale, a bit of luck helps.

Do a search on this forum, and you will find a few earlier posts I did about digital presses and on demand printing. There is a book mentioned from Parsons and Xerox that I highly recommend. If you only get that book to see the Black printing sample pages, it would be worth the low cost.

I keep thinking back to a promotional piece Mark Hauser did a few years ago. While it was offset printed, the run was done with black ink on a warm cream coloured paper. Very nice effect for portrait style images, and maybe something to consider. My guess on Lulu.com and a few other companies is that they are using about a 86 to 92 (at best) brigthness paper, really not that great for photography; maybe just starting with a warm paper and prepping files accordingly would be a good guess. It might also help to proof on paper with similar brightness, rather than on a 94 to 98 brightness paper.

Questions? Hopefully I gave you some ideas.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio

[Frank Petronio]

Thanks. My main question is whether it would work to use "toned" RGB files to simulate sepia-toned greyscale images so that at least I get a warm image.

At this point it doesn't look like lulu allows you choose paper, at least on the size book I am doing.

I suspect that lulu is using multiple subcontractors to fullfill, so it is like using a print broker in the sheetfed world... mixed results are the only guarantee. I won't order more than a few books at a time so my exposure is minimized.

[Gordon Moat]

Hello Frank,

Unfortunately, it is a crap-shoot whether sepia toning RGB will work, or whether their CMYK conversion would introduce a colour cast. I would not try it with Lulu.com based upon samples I have seen so far; perhaps another on-demand printing place could handle it. Last I heard, Lulu.com was running their own digital presses.

The paper idea I mentioned was one possibility, though without that option you don't have much to go on. If you want to try something, take your Greyscale file/scan, then convert to duotone using Black ink and a sepia like Pantone as your other colour. If you have access to a Pantone spot to process conversion table, try to pick a sepia that minimized Cyan in the conversion mix, though with more Magenta than Yellow bias. Play around with the Duotone curves in PhotoShop until you think you have a good mix looking as you want it. Then convert that to RGB and do no other adjustments. That would give a best guess sepia-like B/W image. Unfortunately the variation on any digital press might still mean some odd colour casts in some areas of the images.

Lulu.com is the better known of on-demand printers. You might want to search around more, and find other companies willing to do this type of work. There was a nice article in Picture Magazine a few months ago about on-demand printers, in which they reviewed four major companies, so maybe your better results will come from another place than Lulu.com. Best of luck on this.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio

[Frank Petronio]

Thanks again. I did check out other POD printers but never found one that seemed head and shoulders above the others (size limitations, ugly cover choices, etc.) or they were too expensive (I want to get a stack of portfolio books to send out for potential clients to keep.)

If you have one that you like please fess up!

[Ed Richards]

One odd thing at LuLu. I did a mock up book with some Katrina black and white images. I did a couple of color runs and they were nasty - streaked and magenta. Figuring I had little to lose, I did a black and white run in the comic book format. I expected rough surface cream paper, but got very smooth cool white paper and images that, while a little dark, were pure black and white. I have not done another run yet, but if the paper is anywhere close to OK, doing it in black and white does assure no color casts.

[Frank Petronio]

The black and white 7.5 inch sq book I did only offered creme smooth comic book paper. But the images looked pretty decent, sharp enough, kind of like a good laser printer hitting the right dpi/screen.

I liked the creme myself.

FWIW, a really nice combo for sheetfed is dark blue ink (or a black and blue duotone) on creme paper -- it gives a nice split tone to the images. Be subtle with it tho.

[Ed Richards]

Did you do the book as color printing with black and white images, or as black and white printing? Cream does not bother me, as long as it is smooth. The paper for the 6x9 paperbacks is more like traditional paperback book paper and does not reproduce detail as well.

[Frank Petronio]

They are using creme smooth uncoated for the black and white (black ink only) printing, which is similar to trad paperback novel stock.

The color goes on a smooth white matte uncoated but fine Docutech stock and looks pretty good.