Printer Settings - Nuanced or Numbskull?

I could spend the rest of my life to achieve the correct printer settings for my prints. I am venturing into b&w. B&W screen images are great but it all starts to fall apart printing a 'hardcopy" of the photo. I have read several postings of special inks and modified printer cartridges, printers that take several black ink mixes and so on. I just have an Epson SuperColor P400 printer, an eight cartridge system which includes Matte Black and Photo Black.

 

I made a print utilizing an ICC profile for the paper, print and Ink (SC400, OEM ink and Red River Polar Matte) by turning the driver "mode" off. I could see faint color in the output. HOWEVER, when I tweaked the printer driver, changing from color to grayscale, the output was pure b&w. The same ICC profile was utilized. Interestingly, when I did another test with the exact settings, but with a color photo, the photo printed in color! To retest the grayscale setting for the printer driver when printing a b&w image, I printed the b&w print with the Mode set to color and, sure enough, there was a little color in the output. Set back to grayscale and the print was true b&w. Go figure.

I could spend the rest of my life to achieve the correct printer settings for my prints.

 

Your experience is not unique. There are different ways to control the color, (e.g., in the printer or in Photoshop, etc). You can get "cross-controlled" if you're not careful.

 

Many people say the Epson models with the two blacks are good for B&W.

 

There are some books especially written for various models of the Epson. I have the R1800 and have found the EPSON Complete Guide to Digital Printing (2005) useful. Perhaps there are updates for that.

Epson Advanced B&W can indeed produce dead nuts neutral output throughout the tone curve but you need to find the best settings and, there's no profiles to use.

At least with Epson's Print Layout application (free) you can now soft proof with your own images, unlike the native print drivers that ship with Epson printers that support ABW. Unfortunately, P400 doesn't have three-level or better black ink technology and ABW isn't supported.

Epson Advanced B&W can indeed produce dead nuts neutral output throughout the tone curve but you need to find the best settings and, there's no profiles to use.

At least with Epson's Print Layout application (free) you can now soft proof with your own images, unlike the native print drivers that ship with Epson printers that support ABW. Unfortunately, P400 doesn't have three-level or better black ink technology and ABW isn't supported.

Exactly. Why is it we never know the breadth or limitations of our equipment until AFTER the investment?

I print with Canon printers, but I think the basic principle is the same: if you want true B&W, don't let the printer use color inks. In the case of Canon printers, this is fairly simple, and I suspect that what you describe is the same basic idea. In the case of Canon printers, the best color results require letting the software control color and setting the printer's firmware to stay out of it. For B&W, the best results are usually obtained by doing the reverse: telling the software to let the printer control color and then setting the printer's firmware to B&W.

 

While multiple black and gray inks are better, I was able to obtain passable B&W with a single-black printer in the past.

Still researching. According to a document I found on Epson website, they do not recommend setting output to grayscale on my P400 because the printer keeps the heads clean by using a small amount of each ink. Some of my cartridges are low on ink and that may be the cause of the slight color tonal range I experienced when printing a b&w image. I stumbled on the Piezography website which does have products for the P400 that would render it a pure b&w printer, but I cannot afford to designate a printer to only printing b&w images. I found this YouTube episode of Jose Rodriguez, a YouTube-based inkjet printer guru:

Pure Monochrome Photo Printer Do we really need one?. It is a sixteen minute video definitely worth watching. It does not answer all my questions, but I have time and I also have www.photo.net!

First, you DO want to use (some) colored inks for B&W output. More inks, more continuous tone appearance. The Epson Advanced B&W uses most but not all inks (it used to bypass yellow). And again, yeah, you can get dead nuts neutral prints. Otherwise, you need to bypass that (or with another printer) use a really good ICC output profile that's got excellent neutral output behavior. Not easy to create but doable especially if you end up doing some toning.

Had the OP purchased a P600, this would be an easy fix; Advanced B&W.

A few years ago I was using an old Epson 2200 and doing the black ink Clayton Jones method on matte paper and it seemed to work pretty well, but I imagine there's much better ways now. But I was pretty happy with those results. Is the Clayton Jones method still relevant with today's tech?