B&W on Canon Printers

[Digital10d]

Just printed some of my images onto Ilford Classic Pearl paper and results are just as good as the Classic Gloss. In fact I think the Pearl paper may have the edge over the Glossy. However both these papers work well using IP4700 with BW ink set. Printer settings set to Glossy Paper / Quality High.

 

[RogerB]

That doesn't surprise me. From my experience with the Ilford papers, both the Classic and the Smooth, the glossy and pearl appear to have exactly the same coating. Not like some of the "own brand" glossy and pearl papers. I used the Classic glossy and pearl with Lyson QuadBlack (dye) inks on an Epson 1160 printing through QTR and they printed exactly the same. Colour profiles are also exactly the same. Nice papers, and some of my Lyson B&W prints are now over 5 years old with no noticeable loss of quality.

 

[mikling]

When I interchange profiles between the Ilford CLASSIC line (pearl and gloss) and Hp Premium Glossy, it appears they use identical profiles. I have been told that Epson's long discontinued Colorlife paper was possibly made by Ilford or at least originates from the same source.

 

[nche11]

I am at a bit of loss here about profiles for black and whit printing. Are they for dealing with warm/cold or other tones caused by printing on different papers? My problem here is yes it is true that different paper may have different whites (warm. cold or else) the black and white ink is strictly colorless or gray/grey. I can't understand how manipulating the profiles can change the tone? You can adjust contrast, slide the knobs in your software and tweak those mid tone gray shapes and change the overall density/brightness of the black and whit image. But I don't understand how the warm/cold characteristic of a paper can be changed by black and whit ink that is colorless. Please enlighten me with what I do not know here. Thanks.

 

[Digital10d]

nche11

With Miklings BW inks the only way of altering the tone warm/cold of a print is by using different papers. The base colour of the paper has a lot to do with it but I have found that papers of similar base whites create very different tones. If your using an Epson printer with advanced BW mode then the tone of the print can be altered because the driver mixes colour inks with the two blacks. This can not be done with Miklings inks. Profiling BW using the profiling program in the QTR package is more about linearising the greyscale output. It usually improves shadow detail. With my limited experience with Miklings inks, he has formulated the different shades of black so well that creating a profile makes very little difference. Hope this helps.

 

[mikling]

nche11

you are getting confused here. The discussion of the profiles is as it relates to the possible composition of the paper. With the hypothesis that similar papers have similar profiles and when the same profiles are interchangeable there is the distinct possibility the the paper might well be exactly the same.
This is in the color arena.

The above has nothing to do with the B&W printing with the inkset in question. When using the B&W inkset for the Canon, QTR is not used. If one gets the correct relative shades of ink, then it is possible to achieve good to excellent output.
QTR is a program made for specific printers ( Canon Desktops are not supported by QTR). It allows one to create a profile so that the output from the printer has proper relative shades of gray. By proper, QTR does NOT change the gray tone but it controls the relative intensity. This way even if the shades of gray between different color channels are incorrect, QTR will correct for this. With the inkset for the Canon being discussed here, having something like QTR might well improve the output but it also increases the complexity and cost to the user. So far most have found that the linearity is acceptably good enough to output good quality B&W.

If a particular insket is cool, using QTR cannot correct its coolness or warmth. The grey ink- paper combo is a fixed reaction as it relates to tone.

To add confusion, certain color printers with specific B&W capabilities can change tone by printing some color within the gray inks when B&W printing is being output. Confused enough?

 

[nche11]

Great answer. Thanks. I now understand the purpose of QTR for black and white printing. Am I correct that this is for converting a color image to a black and white one. QTR gives you more accurate gray shades than simple Photoshop desaturation to a color image. It achieves that in conjunction with a few supported printers/inks only. I have seen discussions that seemed to indication it is a matter of Photoshop skill for the conversion task. I think QTR is just an option. Many pros use Photoshop to achieve what they want with some pro level (Epson I believe) inkjet printers with black and white ink.

Anyhow, different paper do give different warm/cold tone including silver halide emulsion photo papers. I believe the tone is determined by the whiteness of the paper.

 

[Digital10d]

No. QTR is a RIP. Its an alternative print driver for controlling individual inks. I've used it with an Epson printer, now deceased, unfortunately not available for Canon printers.

 

[nche11]

That's interesting. I wonder how different it is from custom profiling. A printer driver is where color mapping is performed before passing the color data to the print engine in the printer. In this case it maps and passes colorless monochrome data to the print engine. It seems appropriate to guess that it is actually an additional layer of code for monochrome data mapping. Then the code is integrated with Epson's object code of the driver. The driver code is not tampered but is integrated with another code thus there is no issue in terms of copyright infringement. You can think the code as a custom profile. But it probably has a proprietary algorithm above a simple profiling mechanism. Whatever it is if it does a good job it is a value added intellectual product in the market place.

 

[Digital10d]

My Epson 2400 recently died and so today was donated to the dump with minor modifications via a sledge hammer !! I have replaced it with a Canon Pro9000 Mk2. I bought the 9000 for A3 colour knowing that with only one black ink the B&W has been reported as OK but not brilliant. However I could not resist to see what it was capable of compared to my dedicated B&W IP4700. The 9000 printing with greyscale selected (uses some colour ink) was extremely slow as expected printing mainly with only one ink produced a passable B&W. There is a little colour shift between daylight and tungsten (magenta) but not bad. However the dedicated printer produced a far better print. The IP4700 B&W inks produced a totally neutral print with better contrast, better Dmax and smoother especially noticeable in the highlights. I am still very impressed with Miklings B&W ink set. Hope a version of these inks will be available for the 9000 sometime in the future.