which digital format for b&w prints

In the last years I more and more turned from film photography to digital. I had my own darkroom for many years and always loved b&w photography. With my turn to digital I somehow did more colour work. During the last month my interest in b&w rose again. I'd love to use film again, but don't have the time and space for my darkroom right now and scanning is no option. I'm trying to work on my files useing darktable (Ubuntu user) and slowly am getting better. So much for my background.

My question is, which format for my files I should choose when I'm sending them to a lab to get them printed? I understood that jpgs suffer from substantial loss in grey tones. What alternatives are there?

That would depend upon which formats your lab accepts.

 

16- bit Tiff in ProPhoto color space would be a good choice. If your lab will do grey scale Tiff in 16-bit grey scale would also be a good choice. Does your lab publish profiles of their printers? If not, JPEG is probably as good as any other format.

Thanks for your input. My lab offers ICC-profiles for different papers they use, but only for photoshop and lightroom. Have to find out if or how I could use them with darktable or gimp.

ICC profiles as such are not specific to Photoshop, Lightroom, or any OS. But colour management in Linux is typically an extremely weak area; not quite sure how/if Darktable has it integrated. To install the profiles to start with: ICC Profile Installer .

 

There is no real issue with JPEG, as long as you only use it as the very final step in the process (so work with RAW or TIFF all the way, until the final export for the file to send out. TIFFs are nicer, but also a lot larger. As for the colour profile to append to this file, as long as it's something normal - ProPhoto should work, but Adobe RGB might be a safer bet. It won't make a vast difference for the final print, esp. for B&W (since there are no greens and reds to worry about).

All my printing at home up to 16x24 is done using the b&w Piezographic process. When I need larger prints, I send them to a lab that does Piezographic printing. Always 16 bit Adobe RGB. Works perfectly with no breakdown in tonality.

Thanks again. I guess I will try different options (JPGs, Tiff, PNG) and look if I see a difference.

Canon® PIXMA Pro-1 – It’s hard to beat the Canon PIXMA line. This model is a professional printer for the professional photographer and is designed to be especially good for monochrome photos. It features a higher capacity ink tank than its rivals, which means you can print more photos in between resupplies. This printer features Canon’s patented 12 LUCIA pigment ink system and includes matte black, photo black, dark gray, light gray, gray inks. This printer is designed with black and white photos

Use 16 bit files by all means, but the ProPhoto colour space is irrelevant for greyscale images. It cannot be printed in any case, and would have to be converted to a space that whatever printer is used can handle.

 

In greyscale, the only difference between sRGB and AdobeRGB is in the deep shadow areas, where AdobeRGB maintains a 2.2 gamma curve, while sRGB has a linear region. IMHO the sRGB linear region is madness, and causes posterisation of the darkest tones. It's mostly unnoticeable in colour reproduction, but more so with B&W. So I'd use Adobe RGB as your 'colour' space.

 

The ProPhoto colour space uses a 'non standard' gamma of 1.8 BTW.

 

You'll probably find that the tone curve will need to be manipulated away from a straight 2.2 gamma anyway. Digitally shot B&W often needs a bit of a contrast boost in the mid-tones to emulate the tone curve of film+printing paper. This is very much a matter of personal taste, and as such you need to ensure your monitor shows an accurate representation of what you'll get in the final print. I suspect that's not going to be an easy thing to do having your prints made commercially, but ensuring that your monitor gamma is set to a true 2.2 curve would be a good start.

Edited November 14, 2017 by rodeo_joe|1