B&W Prints

[Smile]

While Spyder3Print might not be lab level, these new products are becoming gamechangers since they allow hobbyists, amateurs and even pros to affordably accomplish things that they were never able to do before. A fraction of the cost of lab equipment, it fulfills the needs of a significant proportion of the users it is intended for and then some. That's technology for you, just like the desktop inkjet printer that can produce superior output to lab processing. Amazing.

Similar things happened when PCs were introduced, they did not replace minis, mainframes. Laughed at, snickered at but eventually look at what they did to the world and what users could do with them. I think products like the Spyders are having the same effect.

The spyder series has slowly been refined and improved where they must be taken seriously now unlike some their earlier products
http://www.on-sight.com/2008/12/08/updated-review-of-colorimeters-and-display-calibration-packages/

While you are correct, it's true only if the user has time and is willing to learn. Otherwise it's cheaper and you get better result with a decision to buy professionally made profile. Now this is also a thing that's not easy. Not everyone creates profiles the same way as a result quality is not the same too. IMHO 50% of profile quality depends on operator not software or hardware. If you don't know how to do it you can make bad profiles with expensive hardware too.

Now I see many sites pop up that advertises that they make profiles, even have i1 spectrophotometers, but wait 300 or 400 basic targets? Manual scanning techniques that they fail to say about? cheap prices that leave quality behind? Or does anyone think that profile making is charity? No thanks.

So I agree that “spiders” have a market like “color munki”, but that they are better

 

[mikling]

Smile
most amateurs and hobbyists acquiring a Spyder package will consider the cost still significant and will likely pursue their hobby by trying to extract as much as they can out of it. Thus they will try and practice as the cost o do is pretty small. Again, while not the best but in the hands of a practiced operator, it still allows them to produce output that was unimagined prior and potentially superior at times.

A similar thing happened in the DIY HiFI speaker world with the PC where, analysis, modeling and simulation and measurement software acquired for hundreds of dollars potentially can allow serious DIY speaker builders to rival some of the best speakers put out by corporations with much bigger i.e million dollar budgets and laboratories. Technology is a game changer, and that is the heart of what technology is all about.

In my experience, if the inkset used in the printer happens to be a very good one matched to the printer and paper very closely to begin with, indeed 300 to 400 patches can in fact yield exceptional results.

Like you said, it is the operator who has the experience can make the difference.

An inkset that is not well balanced will indeed need many samples to generate an accurate correction dataset. So it really depends on the situation. Taken to the extreme, if one formulates an inkset that is perfectly matched to the paper, then zero samples are theoretically required. So by extrapolation to the degree the inkset does not match, and its characteristic, so will the number of patches be required. It could be as low as 100, 300 or maybe 1000 may be required.

So it's always best to start with an inkset that is matched to the printer so that even with a small number of samples potentially good results can be had. A totally mismatched inkset even with a superbly performed multisampled profile could yield poorer results than a well matched inkset with fewer samples. Always start with ink that looks right to begin with and then profile.

The other point as you have mentioned that is totally true is that the person using the printer has to do some work to find the settings that will work properly to produce the best sample to start with. It is not sufficient to simply print a bunch of patches and then profile. Multiple sheets of paper and ink will be consumed in finding the correct driver settings. Because glossy paper is used, doesn't mean that the glossy paper setting is best. Sometimes a different setting will yield better results. This takes time and the operator has to judge which output setting is best prior to measurement. Datacolor recognizes this and this is in their software they have pretarget printing samples where the user has to judge which is the best output prior to printing the samples out. What settings to use is totally up to the operator of the printer. That is one reason why some users, even when they send their multisample output to the expensive profiling service still do not achieve great results, because their printer settings was not right to begin with.

http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/media_settings.html

Anyways this is getting away from B&W.

 

[lolopr1]

I don't know if anybody have ever seen this but is quite interesting how they claim to use only black inks to be used with a QuadTone RIP software even so it is quite expensive and only for Epson printers.
http://shopping.netsuite.com/s.nl/c.362672/sc.15/category.1241/.f
This link is from an ebay seller, according to the seller he is selling an Epson R1800 including the Piezography K7 system http://cgi.ebay.com/Epson-R1800-Pri...ms=66:2|65:1|39:1|240:1318|301:0|293:1|294:50


This is what they claim.

Piezography K7 is a seven dilution pure carbon pigment ink set available in Neutral, Sepia, SplitTone, and Selenium. Piezography K7 allows these printers to produce higher resolution, smoother image quality, and truer neutral b&w output than any EPSON Ultrachrome K3 printer. Even those costing more than $5,000!

Save big and help the environment! Piezography ink is only 20 a milliliter compared to EPSON ink which is 60 a milliliter

With the Continuous Ink Supply system your ink costs will be a fraction of what you are paying for EPSON brand inks, and you will no longer have to feel guilty about throwing away spent cartridges into your local landfill. Did you realize that 90% of all inkjet cartridges are thrown away in landfill? That is the latest news from InfoTrends. More alarming to hear is that 10% of this countries oil intake comes in the form of plastic used in inkjet and laser cartridges. So help do your part for the environment and at the same time produce stunning black and white photos!

The inks are designed to be used with QuadTone RIP software ($50 shareware) which can be downloaded free from the Piezography website by clicking here. While the author of QuadTone RIP offers support for the registration fee, we have produced an entire compliment of paper profiles which are included free with your download. The system for both Mac and Windows is easy to operate by printing a grayscale image and choosing the correct paper profile from the drop down menu of QTR. Advanced users can learn to create their own profiles with QTR's built-in tools. However, the profiles which Vermont PhotoInkjet have created are made on their proprietary monochromatic ink profiling system.

 

[incartek]

I was planning to use one of my printers (Canon ip4000) for Black & White printing only. Current prints are coming out with various tinges & shades of grey but they are not true B&W Prints. What I was planning on doing is replacing all the colour cartridges with B&W cartridges,could this cause me any problems?
Has anyone else in the forum gone down this route & is Black really Black or do I also need to be looking for a specific ink that will allow me to print true B&W photographs ?
Thanks

As to inks you might like to try the Lyson Quad Black. But really using the normal set you get more profiels available.

Paper has as much to do with it as anything. If you want a UK guy who has real impartial advice I'd recommend Keith Cooper - start at www.ecademy.com/account.php?id=8674. Of course I'm biassed in favour of Innova, but have a look at www.printalot.org/paper or www.opusalbums.com/paper

Call or email me if you have questions.
Daniel

 

[martin0reg]

..The inks I am using are grey IS inks meant for the HP gray cartridge. What I grew to suspect is that these are used by HP as a direct BW analogue to CMY.
HP CMY are close to the CMY of the BCI-6 cartridges and not too far off that of the CLI-8..

I have read the whole thread (hoping to understand the main things with my limited english) and I would like to put
- a grey ink set in my ip4000.

Here is my summary of the basic settings, tell me if I got it right:
BCI-3ebk > pigment black ?
bci-6 black > photoblack
bci-6 yellow > light gray
bci-6 magenta > gray
bci-6 cyan > dark gray

If you print color RGB pictures, the setting of CMY in the canon driver will adjust the converting to B/W.
But you can also convert the RGB into BW with your photo editor before printing.

Now I would like to know what sort of gray inks you have used:
cartridge/ink name (by HP?) or ink name of the refill ink.

I would have to order this ink from my hometown in germany, so probably I will have to look for similar refill inks. But the name of the original grey you have used would be helpful.

PS: "..grey IS.." - does that mean Image Specialists?
I can find their catalogue but they don't have their own online-shop.
On HP original ink/cartridges I can only find two grays, not three (gray and light gray, but no dark gray)

 

[TXAvi8tor]

..The inks I am using are grey IS inks meant for the HP gray cartridge. What I grew to suspect is that these are used by HP as a direct BW analogue to CMY.
HP CMY are close to the CMY of the BCI-6 cartridges and not too far off that of the CLI-8..

I have read the whole thread (hoping to understand the main things with my limited english) and I would like to put
- a grey ink set in my ip4000.

Here is my summary of the basic settings, tell me if I got it right:
BCI-3ebk > pigment black ?
bci-6 black > photoblack
bci-6 yellow > light gray
bci-6 magenta > gray
bci-6 cyan > dark gray

If you print color RGB pictures, the setting of CMY in the canon driver will adjust the converting to B/W.
But you can also convert the RGB into BW with your photo editor before printing.

Now I would like to know what sort of gray inks you have used:
cartridge/ink name (by HP?) or ink name of the refill ink.

I would have to order this ink from my hometown in germany, so probably I will have to look for similar refill inks. But the name of the original grey you have used would be helpful.

This is all I've found so far. U.S.-based supplier listing Dark, Medium and Light Grays; as best I can tell, these are dye inks appropriate for the ip4000. I've not ordered from them, so IDK if this will work, but I plan to try it in my newly-acquired ip4200 ($20 USD with nearly full Canon ink carts).

hth,

TXA

 

[qwertydude]

The one problem I do see is a dithering pattern problem. I know on my IP4600 that photo black only has the 5 picoliter droplet size. There are no fine nozzles on photo black and gray gradients are made using a composite gray from the color carts. On the darker gray gradient areas I notice under a 10x loupe dots from the large black nozzles are pretty obvious. I think you'd need a good black and white specific driver in order to fill all the carts with black or different shades of gray in order to print truly accurate black and whites and maintain the right shading gradients. On mine a good color profile using color inks turns out fabulous black and white prints because the composite gray is completely neutral with color casts due to paper being canceled out by the profile, you may find that you get a color cast on pure black ink depending on the paper you use, especially if you end up going with pigment ink prints. Carbon pigments can range anywhere from slightly warm to almost sepia depending on formulation and particle size or whether it is a hybrid pigment with dye ink to cancel out the natural warmth of the carbon particles. If you keep your colors you can maintain control of your color temperature.

 

[martin0reg]

... you may find that you get a color cast on pure black ink depending on the paper you use, especially if you end up going with pigment ink prints. Carbon pigments can range anywhere from slightly warm to almost sepia depending on formulation ..

You are right. I have an epson printer and tried the so called "black only mode": set the driver to plane paper with highest quality / slow speed and use photo paper - only black ink comes out (e.g. with r285 or 1400). On plain paper it is neutral, on photo paper there is a slightly green color cast, due to the paper. The droplets are definitly black not colored.
But the advantage is: there is no changeable cast all over the image, the color is uniform and the cast is not strong, it depends on the paper.
Disadvantage: you can see the dither looking very close (below 30cm).
So despite the issues I would definitely try a BW ink set for canon, if there will be one...
There are those carbon ink sets for epson and most users seem to be happy. I hope dye BW ink set for canon would be less expensive than the carbon sets, for trying out

 

[pharmacist]

About the R285 and the 1400 printers: these printers use a variable droplet size technology: the same nozzles can produce different droplet size thanks to the piezographic technology from Epson. So each nozzle can produce the following droplet sizes: 1.5 / 3 / 7 / 14 / 21 pl, which is pretty advanced. These Epson printers have 6 channels: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Photo Black, Light Magenta, Light Cyan.

Has one ever tried to rewrite the driver or use a RIP-software (QTR for example) to omit the Light Magenta and the Light Cyan colours in favour of the following colours: Matte Black and Grey ??? Since the variable droplet technology can already produce nice photo magenta/cyan shades using the standard strength magenta and cyan ink, even better than the 3 droplet sizes on the Canon IP4500/IP5300/MP980 with 5, 3, 1 pl for the cyan/magenta/grey positions.

By rewriting the driver software to include the matte black and grey inks and omitting the light cyan and light magenta positions it is possible to have a true b/w neutral printer rivaling the Epson R2400/R2880 printer and best of all: without the need of swapping out the matte black/photo black which is known to be very ink consuming and using only 6 ink channels !!!

 

[arcascomp]

Hi first post so please be gentle! I'm new to the whole refill thing having used lasers for general output for years but now I want to get into photo printing to actually see all the digital pictures I've been taking and I have jumped right in to the inkjet world with both feet.

I am really interested in the black and white printing and have just yesterday bagged a Epson 1270 from ebay for buttons with the intention of using the MIS Ultratone inks but this discussion has me really interested. I see that HP has a photo cartridge with three greys in it (number 59) that is sometimes listed as black, dark grey and light grey and other times dark grey, med grey and light grey. Is this the source of the three greys? if so, do you also use HP black to be a good match?

Finally, if I dedicate my 1270 to B&W printing can I refill with HP Photosmart ink? or is it a completely different chemical make up.

Cheers,

Craig.