Can't get good digital black and white prints...

<p>Hello all. I was wondering if anyone could give me some tips for printing black and white photos digitally. Specifically I have been trying to print some of my Holga work (check my galleries) from scans using an Epson 9800 with K3 chrome ink and Museo Portfolio Rag paper. I cannot seem to get a good print and it's really frustrating!<br>

In particular what's been happening is that instead of printing nice smooth gradations I can see like a line separating different shades of gray. I have never had any problems printing black and white images before, but my holga work is a lot more contrasty, grainy, and seem to be much more difficult images to print digitally. I have printed medium format Mamiya black and white images on Museo Silver Rag and they came out amazing (they looked almost identical to my silver gelatin prints). But these Holga images on the Museo Portfolio Rag just do not have smooth gradations at all and look blocked up in certain areas and I just can't figure it out. Can anyone shed some light on this for me or have any suggestions? Thanks so much. <br>

Chris Durnin</p>

<p>Hey Chris,</p>

<p>Have you tried printing on a fiber-based paper like Ilford's Gold Silk Fibre? Just curious how that affects the outcome and if it brings you closer to the desired result.</p>

<p>If it does, it's likely your choice of paper. If not, could be the scan.</p>

<p>How are you printing it? With an ICC profile? With ABW mode (I believe your printer has that)?</p>

<p>You're using the right paper type (something with a matte black), right? </p>

<p>If you're printing normally (not using ABW), does the blocking occur in softproofing too?</p>

<p>What parameters are you selecting when you scan the picture? Are you selecting 24 or 32 bit color scan? Or are you selecting some type of greyscale scan, like 8 bit, 16 bit, or 32bit? Also, what's the DPI resolution when you scan? 300dpi? 600dpi 800dpi? 72dpi? When the save the save scan file image, what type file format are you selecting, TIFF? JPEG? BMP???<br>

All these factors affect scan file quality before even sending the file to the printer.</p>

<p>Thanks for the responses so far.<br>

I scan the negatives at 2400dpi(or ppi, whatever), using 32 bit color, and then converting to black in white in photoshop cs3.<br>

I use matte black with the epson 9800, but I'm not familiar with ABW printing...what does ABW mean? Oh wait, does that mean Advanced Black and White mode? If so, then yes I print using advanced black and white, not color mode.<br>

I print using the ICC profile for Museo Portfolio Rag from Museo's website.<br>

I haven't tried printing on a glossy fiber based paper yet...I will try to get a hold of some to try and see if there's a difference.</p>

<p>How dense do the negs look?<br>

On the Holga, because you don't have as much control over exposure, some of your negs can end up very light or very dense.<br>

Consumer scanners like the Epson V700 don't cope as well with very dense negs. They need careful use of the scanning settings.</p>

<p>Chris, give QTR a try:</p>

<p>http://www.quadtonerip.com/html/QTRoverview.html</p>

<p>QTR is shareware so you can try it first. Start with the pre-profiled papers to make the learning curve easier. If you have a spectro you can profile any paper you want with a bit more work.<br>

If you do have a spectro look here:</p>

<p>http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/printfix_pro_for_bw.html</p>

<p>for some other techniques that use QTR's create ICC program. There are numerous ways to smooth out your printing with the K3 inks. If you want to look at dedicating a printer to b&w there are K7 inks from Piexography:</p>

<p>http://www.piezography.com/</p>

<p>and if you are willing to do the ground work there are many other options as well:</p>

<p>http://paulroark.com/ </p>

<p>is one, scroll down to: Black and White Printing.</p>

<p>try not to select any icc profile in Photoshop, yes no color profile...so in photoshop it will be NO COLORMANAGEMENT. Then use the ABW neutral setting, darker..dont touch anything else except, where you see 2 little empty white box beside a color wheel, enter 3 and 3.</p>

<p>This is the correct way of using the ABW as per Epson, and me testing it ; )</p>

<p>let us know..</p>

<p>In addition to Patrick's wise advice above, you should also check out <a href="http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/Epson3800/index.html">Eric Chan's </a>website. While it explicity deals with the Epson 3800, it offers great advice on B&W printing. In addition, he prepares inexpensive B&W profiles that take advantage of the ABW driver. Additionally, the default setting for this driver is usually 'darker' which for almost all papers is too dark.</p>

<p>the darker setting is too dark when people use in photoshop let printer managed color..when you use the no color managed option, you really let the ABW do is job, and i find this setting to be pretty good at giving nice black on luster, semi gloss, gloss paper..so maybe if you use a matte one, you will like to use the dark setting instead? its been a long time i printed on a matte surface so i cant recall..but make a test ; )</p>

<p>After I let the prints dry for a day they looked a tad bit better, but there still wasn't smooth gradations like on screen.<br>

Marizu, it doesn't have anything to do with the scanning becuase the images look great on screen.<br>

Patrick, I will try using the darker setting and see what that does.</p>

<p>Just a little update. From what I can gather, I'm pretty positive that what I was experiencing entirely had to do with using matte paper! :-( I was really starting to get into using the great 100% cotton beautiful matte papers that are out there...but I know now that for my particular work, they just simply do not work the way I want them to. They can not handle the extreme vignetting and shifts from white to pure black. <br>

I reprinted some of my images, this time using museo silver rag and harman fb glossy....and every one looked gorgeous! The tonal gradations were beautiful on both papers and the extreme transitions from white to black looked as good as they did on screen. So now I just know that I need to reprint this portfolio on a nice glossy paper instead of matte. i had wanted to give the print a nice deckled edge and frame with a float mount so you could see the paper, but alas plans will have to change and I guess I will just be matting these images with matte board the way I have always done my black and white darkroom work.<br>

I just find it odd that I had never heard of any source talking about this issue...how matte papers cannot handle extreme white to black transitions the way glossy papers do. Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough for that article.<br>

Anyway I hope this experiment will help future holga users who might be frustrated trying to print some of their images on matte paper. Thanks for the help everyone.</p>

<p>Chris Durnin</p>