Black and White printing

[cosmao]

Hello to all,

Newbie in this wonderfull and very professionnal forum, this is my first post. Please have the
kindness to excuse my broken English.

I purchased a Canon i9900 6 years ago and I am very happy with it... for color printing.I use to
refill BCI-6 cartridges with Sudhaus inks. After doing profiles for some Ilford papers
(ColorMunki), color prints are nice.
Unfortunatly B&W prints are not so good! The least bad B&W prints I got have been done with"
Ilford Galerie Smooth Matte Paper", but this is far from perfect. So I decided to buy a dedicated
printer in B & W, A3+, low cost.


First choice: Epson WF1100 (named B1100 in Europe). Epson cartridges will be emptied and

cleaned, then filled with black and gray inks only.(Obviously the best way is to buy new empty
cartridges)

For example among the available inks systems:

a) MIS "EZ" Ultratone inks (one black ink and one grey ink, all the midtones inks are the same
density).

b)MIS "Eboni-4" Ultratone (one black ink and three grey inks)

c)"Precision Colors" features a set of 4 black and gray Image Specialist inks. See:
This set is designed for Canon 5 inks printers, but it may suit for the WF1100 ?

Second choice : Canon IX4000. The OEM cartridges will be emptied and cleaned, then filled with 4
black and grey inks from "Precision Color".

It is not evident to make the best choice; maybe someone has some experience with these combos
printer/black inks.
Anyway all your suggestions and comments are welcome.

Black and White with inkjet printers is a fascinating subject, and I like to makes tries and
experiments.

Thanks a lot

JCB

My equipment: PC 24" monitor and Imac 21" Leopard - ColorMunki (monitor and printer profiling) ;
Photoshop CS4

 

[martin0reg]

the b&w ink set from precision colors is only for canon 5 channel printers with C-M-Y-K (and textblack), not for 4 channel printers without photo black (C-M-Y and textblack) like the IX4000, as mikling said somewhere in this thread:
http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=5604&p=11

MIS have carbon/pigment inks set for specific epson models, there is much information on their site.

 

[rodbam]

I've read that the pigment ink printers do better B&W prints. I get decent results from my dye ink pro9000 but the pro9500 is suppose to do B&W better & of course the Epson pigment printers.

 

[cosmao]

Thanks to martinOreg and rodbam for yours fast answers.

martinOreg, I don't understand why using the four grey and black inks set (from Precision Colors) in a four channel printer (Canon ix4000) do not work properly, knowing that the printer will be use only for photos printing. So, one don't need the text black cartridge. I think it's worth a try.

rodbam please, how do you get decent B&W with your pro9000 printer ? what IS inks ? What is your printer's settings? What paper(s)?

Regards
cosmao

 

[martin0reg]

The problem with the four channel canons seems to be the missing photo black. The b&w set from mikling is optimised for C-M-Y-K (apart from PGI / text black), and if the K is missing the b&w printing is not the best. Mikling have tried it in a MX700. But you can try it yourself and report.
http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=5604&p=5

There is also a formulation to mix six colors C-LC-M-LM-Y-K from this set, to use it with older A3 models like S9000
And there is a new ineypensive canon A3 model, finally with photo black, IX6550 (europe name), with CLI-226 carts C-M-Y-K, which could work with miklings b&w ink set.

 

[The Hat]

Whats Black and White and is starving?...

 

[rodbam]

Hat said....Whats Black and White and is starving?...sad

I imagine it's an empty cartridge.....happy

cosmao, I just tick the greyscale box in my printer settings & let the printer do the rest & use the normal colour ink set from Precision colors who use Image Specialist inks. I do the B&W conversion in Photoshop & work on the tonal range & then send it to the printer. In my limited experience on using different different papers it seems like the colour we can get is from particular paper types not just from the printer using colour inks to make B&W. It can be hit & miss sometimes because I never really know if a print will have a slight colour cast until I see the print but so far I have got what I would call great looking B&Ws with Canons photo paper plus semi gloss & Canon Pro 11 gloss papers. The B&W print with the semi gloss looked very good straight from the printer but the Pro11 print had a slight colour cast that seemed to disappear over a few days as the inks dried. I've read a poster who did a test with a printer set up for just doing B&Ws, the printer had no colour inks in it just a couple of different shades of black & some different shades of grey. He found that some papers had no colour cast & others did which seemed to show that the papers can add a colour cast not just the printer.

 

[martin0reg]

Like rodbam says - NO paper is neutral, the color of the print is a result of interaction between paper and ink.
Therefor you should try different paper settings with your photo paper, because the settings are calculated for specified OEM paper-ink-combinations and one setting could more or less match a third party paper-ink-combination.
But with a b&w ink set you can exclude color shifting from bad mixing of C-M-Y dots and you can minimize the "metamerism", that is color shift of a print under different lighting.
Epson color printers with three shades of grey/black should print neutral b&w with its own cartridges.

 

[The Hat]

Whats Black and White and is starving?...

No takers then, well ok the answer..


Osamas Cat...

 

[cosmao]

Hello,

Thank you Rodbam for the lot of details about your workflow. MartinOreg you are right about the necessary five channels Canon with a photo black one: obviously, the black cartridge in the Canon 4000 is not active in Photo mode. So we need absolutly a five channels printer. The new Canon ix6550 would be ok, but it looks flimsy and the cartridges are ridiculous (about 5 ml !).

So I think my choice for B&W printer will be the Epson B1100 with cartridges refilled with InkSupply / MIS Ebony 4 or MIS "EZ" Ultratone at the beginning.

This printer and B&W inksets are very well documented (see http://www.paul ruark.com and http://www.inksupply.com/). Icing on the cake, the printer is very inexpensive (about 200 euros).

I will report as soon as possible.

Regards
Cosmao