Colour casts on b&w inkjet prints

[steve kessel]

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I've just started printing b&w regularly on my HP 9650 inkjet printer (3.5 years old) and notice a pinkish cast on the prints. 4 hours on the online HP technical help arrived at the solution: a hardware issue and I should contact my local service centre. Then I spoke to a lady up the road who should know about these things (makes her living from art photography) and she said one will always get a colour cast on b&W's from most inkjets, has had from her's and is now getting an Epson 3800 at great expense which will be different.

 

The HP 9650 is meant to print all photos (includingb&w) using a colour cartridge and a photo colour cartridge.

 

What are others' experiences of this issue on inkjets?

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[Guest stnami]

Happens here in OZ on hot days summer is a bummer to print B&W in non aircon

[steve kessel]

Happens here in OZ on hot days summer is a bummer to print B&W in non aircon

 

Seriously?

 

Even if the photo's been taken in Alaska?

[carstenw]

The only printers which repeatedly avoid this issue are the ones with several grey inks, like the K3 inkset from Epson and some similar, recent products from HP and Canon. Other printers regularly run into this, and the smallest problem with any one component could cause it, like a slightly different flow of ink from one cartridge. The problem is most often that the light and medium grey tones have to be produced by mixing the colour inks in perfect, equal amounts, which is nearly impossible to do without a cast. To work around it, you would probably need to profile the printer relatively often. A more lasting, and not necessarily more expensive solution is to buy a more recent printer, like the R2400 from Epson or any of the larger brothers, and again, there are similar printers from Canon and HP.

[Guest stnami]

.....sure does.............. even if the photos are taken of penguins that reside there in bnw........ changes the viscosity of the ink

[larry]

The new Canon Pro 9000 does a surprisingly good job (although very slow) of printing B&W when set to the grayscale option. (My previous Canon printer did an abysmal job on B&W.) However, pigment ink printers with gray ink will typically do a better job than printers that use dye inks.

 

Larry

[Guest malland]

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As others have said the latest Epson printers using the K3 inks don't have this probelm. The other solution, rather than changing printers, is to use the ImagePrint RIP, which does a great job but is not cheap.

 

—Mitch/Bangkok

[george_b]

I use an Epson 1290, I just use the Black Ink. Settings in the printer control panel, I'm sure a later printer would be better but this is the one I've got at the moment. Can't buy and M8 and a new printer ;-).

[ericperlberg]

I don't do b/w printing but run into the issues occassionally because of my profiling business.

 

I've heard a range of opinions of b/w using imageprint from great to useless.

 

Another very popular solution is QTR: QuadToneRIP Overview

 

There's a very good yahoo group on b/w printing here:

DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint : Digital BW, The Print

 

Printers/inks/papers are an dynamic combination of variables both mechanical and chemical. You may likely read conflicting information on any point and as confusing as it may seem, both parties may be correct. Chaos theory: small differences in initial conditions can produce very different final outcomes.

[ericperlberg]

Also, I think you can get rid of the colour cast by getting a custom printer profile providing its not a hardware issue (clogged head, partially clogged head, weird ink interactions etc) Most profilers won't (don't/can't) make a monochrome profile but since you say your printer is printing b/w using the colour cartridges, a custom profile should help get rid of the cast.

[Guest malland]

Also, I think you can get rid of the colour cast by getting a custom printer profile providing its not a hardware issue (clogged head, partially clogged head, weird ink interactions etc) Most profilers won't (don't/can't) make a monochrome profile but since you say your printer is printing b/w using the colour cartridges, a custom profile should help get rid of the cast.

My experience has been that a custom color profile is not an adequate solution for solving a color cast in B&W from printers that work only from colors. Some years ago I had a Fuji Pictrography 4000 printer — not an inkjet — for which the late Bruce Fraser, co-author of Real World Photoshop, as an experiment, made some custom profiles to try to solve a color cast problem for B&W printing. After repeated attempts of refining custom profiles for various color casts we found that, while the most refined custom profile worked for the test image used, it didn't work for all images and Bruce concluded that ICC profiles are not a good solutiion to achieve B&W prints without a color cast. In the case of the Fuji printer Bruce said that the solution would have been for Fuji to support grayscale input by building a lookup table with 256 entries for neutral combinations of R, G, and B. Fuji was not willing to do this because they wrote me that they viewed this as a color printer.

 

The situation is the same for inkjet printers that print only with color inks. For the latter the solution is a RIP: I only have experience with ImagePrint, which is the perfect solution in this regard. As I wrote above the newer Epson printers that have three black and gray inks have solved this problem, as have equivalent printers from other manufacturers.

 

Steve , if you wish to keep your current printer and use it extensively for B&W, the only solution is a RIP with the quality of ImagePrint. Other RIPs I'm sure will work, but I don't have experience with them.

 

—MItch/Bangkok

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/

[matofthemint]

I have found that the paper has a lot to do with what colour the cast is with b&w prints, and how much cast. Some time past I settled on Ilford Galerie Classic Pearl Paper. It has, at least on my oldish HP 932c, The least objectionable colour cast. The HP papers gave me a very pronounced pick to red cast. Also with the Ilford paper, the back prints as well as the front - puts rejects to good use making test prints.

 

Actually this is about my 50th post. Some where they started counting anew.

[charlesphoto99]

I'll second the Imageprint RIP, though the new Epson drivers do do a pretty good job. The Imageprint driver though emulates a Quadtone printer and therefore one can print grayscale images directly with no need to convert to RGB. It is using mostly the black inks in an intelligent manner. Also easy to fine tune tone.

 

Try papers without OBA's as well, like the Crane Silver Rag or natural matte papers. The OBA's can cause some color cast (magenta usually) under certain lighting conditions even with the RIP.

[ericperlberg]

My experience has been that a custom color profile is not an adequate solution for solving a color cast in B&W from printers that work only from colors. snip

Yes, I agree. Frequently the problem is the printer driver which is why a RIP may help as it replaces the printer driver in the workflow. I should have said in some cases a profile can rid a b/w print of a colour cast. That has been reported to me on profiles I've made for clients by just linearising and profiling. But its not a panacea I agree. Generalising from any one experience is tricky because the symptom (colour cast) may be the result of any of a bunch of factors in the printer/ink/paper soup of interactions.

[steve kessel]

Thank you all for your interesting and helpful responses.

 

At present my needs are very modest. Picture taking, post processing and printing are relatively new hobbies which I enjoy tremendously, including learning new techniques.

 

My printer is a relic from when I did a fair bit of CAD drawing at home and now provides tangible evidence of my photo exploits. I'm disappointed that so far HP have not acknowledged that colour casting seems to be an endemic problem. Today their technical helpline advised me to increase the dry time when printing B&W - we shall see.

 

The RIP route may be too specialised and costly for my setup. The Ilford paper recommendation has appeal, at least worth trying. The Epson printers with K3 ink seem to address the issue directly. I came across one outlet offering the 2400 for £230, way below the rest of the pack but it galls to ditch an otherwise perfectly serviceable machine after such a short time. If I got any good at this game I'd go for a proven rig that produced A2 and start a cottage industry.

 

Thanks again. I'm glad I posted this even though I don't have a ready solution.

 

Steve

[adan]

I have an Epson 1280, and like George B. I have printed using black-ink-only for 5 years. A tiny bit grainy, but fine for "35mm-like" shots in larger prints (11x14 and above) with some tweaks in the printer driver to decrease contrast and increase brightness.** Sold a fair number of those prints.

 

Recently I tried 6-color prints again, using a fully 'color-managed' system - RGB monochromes rather than grayscale, and photoshop's color management with a profile for the 1280. There is a faint warm cast in near-blacks (in the 90-95% range), but it is definitely better than I was getting from an unprofiled 4-color printer 5 years ago. And much smoother tonality than the otherwise nice black-only prints. The only thing that worries me is that color dyes are more susceptible to fading than black, so I may end up with some color shifts down the line.

 

Once the 1280 finally wears out (and it has been an incredible brick!) I will definitely move up to a 3-gray printer.

 

** BTW even black-only prints can have slight color casts - Ilford Smooth Gloss/Pearl papers run a tad purple, while Epson Premium Gloss/Luster papers run a tad green, and Epson Matte has a touch of chocolate. Just something to do with how the ink interacts with the mordants and other stuff in the paper coatings.

[george_b]

Hi, btw my 1290 is profiled and try as did I always had colour castes, etc. I met a guy in our local camera shop showing off his B&W with his new Nikon. He gave me the tips he used, including that he used Optimum Memorie paper which I find gives me superb prints.

Can't be that bad when I have won the Monochrome Picture of the Year at my camera club and also judges say the images are superb. It does it for me. Sorry to say I did not use a Leica for those images . . .

[steve kessel]

Altering the dry time had no effect. Twiddling the colour setting on the print properties to make the b&w print "cooler" produces a more acceptable print for now, not obviously pink, fairly close to neutral but I don't know how one tells for sure.

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