Best place to print a book from M Monochrom?

[mmradman]

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No issues with colour files from M9, D700, Z7 and Monochrom files, both film and M246, did several Blurb mixed colour/B&W books over long time span, latest one late 2019. 

Typical workflow, RAW file processed in ACR and finished in PS.  Usually select top quality gloss paper on offer.

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[kuad82001]

1 hour ago, mmx_2 said:

jpegs are just fine, there is not really any noticable degrading. Export your files with 100percent quality and you should be fine. It's a bit odd that Lightroom does not have this feature and even more odd that Lightroom is shipped with the Monochrom given the fact that it is not the best tool for B&W (convient though!).

What is the best tool for the Monochrom?

 

[mmx_2]

10 hours ago, kuad82001 said:

What is the best tool for the Monochrom?

 

Photoshop offers a lot more possibillities, but I personally like Silver Efex Pro. Some people here will tell you that Capture one is the best. You can download a free trial of Silver Efex. Affinity Photo is a very good alternative to Photoshop. The biggest flaw I've found with Lightroom is that it can't discard color information and even worse, it actually adds "colors" to BW-files.

[AceVentura1986]

I’m the good friend the OP mentions above. The process I used consists of toning the image in Lightroom so as to create a warm color tone in a BW image. This is done using the split toning control in Lightroom and has previously worked well for me. 

Recently, I gave my boss a photo book of the last four years in office (we’re in government so this constitutes his first term in office), consisting of color images from my ME and a Canon plus BW images from my M9M. Assuming the color printer would still read the BW images as “color” images, I used the split toning feature in Lightroom to apply a subtle warm tone to the highlights while leaving the shadows untouched. It’s so subtle an effect that it doesn’t look like sepia but merely a warm print and works quite well next to the color images in the book. I’ve done this several times in the past and it seems a good workaround that defeats metamerism. I’ve now seen this book in my boss’s office several times and it still looks great. I did the same thing with the OP’s print job with apparently poor results. 

The difficulty here, IMHO, is that the photographer is not in control of the entire process. Blurb typically outsources much (all?) of its printing so the quality would be affected by individual printing houses and even the calibration of individual printers within these print houses. This usually isn’t much of an issue with color prints, but in BW it can unfortunately be significant. 

Perhaps running images thru photoshop and uploading them in Blurb’s web app is the better way of doing this but it really does seem to add complexity to the process. I will try it out, tho. 

[kuad82001]

Thanks for all the replies and suggestions.

 

[Mark II]

On 1/6/2020 at 6:35 PM, kuad82001 said:

Hi there!

Just got back my book from Blurb and the images are all messed up. Green tinge, magenta streaks, ect. I know that they

print as if it is a color image but wow. Anyone have recommendations on a place that handles images from MM1 better?

Grateful,

Dennis

 

I had the same problem. Contact Blurb support and show them an example and they should reprint for free.

If the original JPEG images that you used in the book design are pure monochrome, no amount of Photoshop or other fiddling will fix the problem. The fundamental issue is poor calibration/maintenance of the printer itself, and this often depends on the particularly company that was used by Blurb.The problem seems to be worse with larger prints, where I suffered green/purple banding that was clearly not in the original JPEGs.

It would be nice to find an alternative for purely monochrome printing, but I have yet to find anything better short of either a substantial print run or home-printing and binding.

[AceVentura1986]

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21 hours ago, Mark II said:

I had the same problem. Contact Blurb support and show them an example and they should reprint for free.

If the original JPEG images that you used in the book design are pure monochrome, no amount of Photoshop or other fiddling will fix the problem. The fundamental issue is poor calibration/maintenance of the printer itself, and this often depends on the particularly company that was used by Blurb.The problem seems to be worse with larger prints, where I suffered green/purple banding that was clearly not in the original JPEGs.

It would be nice to find an alternative for purely monochrome printing, but I have yet to find anything better short of either a substantial print run or home-printing and binding.

When ordering prints from Zenfolio, I use the dedicated BW option. All my BW prints available for order on my Zenfolio website are specifically dedicated BW prints. Unfortunately, I’m not aware of any such option for photo books. Further, this option would obviously not work in a book consisting of mixed color and BW. 

Given all the above and my experience ordering from Blurb I still think the warm toning method I’ve employed is the most likely to work and chalk this instance up to printer error or miscalibration. 

[kuad82001]

So I received the reprint book yesterday. Unfortunately the problem persists. Color cast over many images and a green tinge throughout. Very disappointed with Blurb.

[piblondin]

FWIW, I haven't had any problems with black and white images and Blurb, but I do my own pre-press work in InDesign and deliver Blurb with the print-ready PDF.