No black ink only on Epson R1800?

"Karl Winkler" wrote in message
oups.com...
I just tried twice to print a B&W image using black ink only on this
printer - or so I thought (color:black in "Print Settings"), and the
image is grayscale. But the prints have a very pronounced blue-green
cast in the grays.

I'm using a Mac with OX10.3.9, Photoshop CS2, etc. My color prints are
pretty good, since I've calibrated the monitor, tweaked the gamma,
etc. But so far, the B&W printing is totally unacceptable. Any ideas
how to get this thing to only lay down black ink?


I don't know your printer but my R200 doesn't allow black ink only for some
papers - I tick heavy matt and then I get the choice of black ink only in
the advanced settings.

John

Bob Williams wrote:
Karl Winkler wrote:
I just tried twice to print a B&W image using black ink only on this
printer - or so I thought (color:black in "Print Settings"), and the
image is grayscale. But the prints have a very pronounced blue-green
cast in the grays.

I'm using a Mac with OX10.3.9, Photoshop CS2, etc. My color prints are
pretty good, since I've calibrated the monitor, tweaked the gamma,
etc. But so far, the B&W printing is totally unacceptable. Any ideas
how to get this thing to only lay down black ink?

Karl Winkler
http://www.karlwinkler.com

Are you using genuine Epson inks and Epson paper?
Different papers will print differently with th same ink.
Evidently the Black ink is not a "PURE" black but attains its black
color by combining several different colors. Different papers may
exhibit a bias toward one of the colored components e.g. cyan... which
would explain the blue-green cast.
Bob Williams

Black ink absorbs all colors. Few real inks for digital
printers will do that. So not only will the color cast for
black and white printing change with paper, it will also change
with the lighting of the print.

A standard home experiment for kids (and useful for grownups
too) is to take a strip of absorbant paper and put a bit of
black ink on it an inch or two from the bottom of the strip.
Suspend the strip and dip and dip the ink end into a cup of
water, taking care to keep the ink out of direct contact.

The water will move up to the ink and past it. As it does,
the various colored components of the ink will separate and
can be seen.

This works best with fountain pen ink but it ought to work
with digital printer ink too.

--
--- Paul J. Gans

Floyd L. Davidson wrote:
Karl Winkler wrote:
I just tried twice to print a B&W image using black ink only on this
printer - or so I thought (color:black in "Print Settings"), and the
image is grayscale. But the prints have a very pronounced blue-green
cast in the grays.

I'm using a Mac with OX10.3.9, Photoshop CS2, etc. My color prints are
pretty good, since I've calibrated the monitor, tweaked the gamma,
etc. But so far, the B&W printing is totally unacceptable. Any ideas
how to get this thing to only lay down black ink?

I'm not sure how far you are willing to go with getting
BW results... but if you have a Linux system, the CUPS
print driver for the R1800 can very easily be configured
for virtually any color combination you like. Each ink
can be adjusted for both density and gamma, hence it
might cost you a few bucks worth of ink to configure it
by the cut and try method, but it flat will do it.

I've twice printed a BW on an R1800, and both were some
time back. One was a high contrast print, virtually
two-tone; the other was a normal contrast range BW
print. I don't recall how I did either of them, but I
don't remember anything tedious either.

Try http://www.cups.org/ for more details.

--
--- Paul J. Gans

Karl Winkler wrote:
On Jul 4, 9:24 am, John McWilliams wrote:
John McWilliams wrote:
Joe Petolino wrote:
frederick wrote:
The R1800 can do an okay job on monochrome. With mine using good ICC
profiles and colour-managed printing though photoshop, I get near
neutral results - a very slight shift to cyan in light tones. I can see
it - but nobody else has ever commented when looking at prints. They
are good enough for display, but not as good as R2400/HPB9180 monochrome
prints.
But, I'm 100% sure that my monitor is profiled well, and that my
workflow is correct.
What does your monitor profile have to do with the neutrality of
your monochome prints?
If it hasn't been converted to grey scale- and many apparent B+W images
are not- it may have a lot to do with it.
Workflow being correct for greyscale images, though, is imperative. Make
sure printing is entirely managed by Photoshop, or entirely managed in
the printer driver would be the first thing to check.
Sorry, frederick and others, I had a lot of unread messages here this
a.m, and didn't load fresh, so my post is redundant to a degree.

So, Karl: Grayscale. Paper matched to ink. Check all driver settings.

Please let us know what does the trick.

Guys, thanks for all the input. I've re-checked all the driver
settings, color settings, etc., and made sure I have the latest driver
and paper profiles. It's Epson inks and paper. None of this seems to
help: a B&W print from a grayscale image with color:black selected in
printer settings yields a print with very strong cyan tones. I've
looked at the print under magnification and I can see that color inks
were used because there are cyan and magenta dots along with the black
dots.

Interestingly, if I look at the color controls dialog box, then select
"advanced" I see the color sliders. The C, Y, and M sliders are grayed
out and so I can't adjust them. This should tell us that only black
ink would be used... but it's just not the case. It appears that the
only option is to print in color and set up a custom profile via trial
and error. This of course will use up ink, paper and time. I'm sure
Epson doesn't mind.

So it comes back down to the fact that as far as I can tell, there's
no way to select black ink only. I wrote a note to Epson about it,
we'll see what they say. I mentioned in the note that I probably would
not have purchased this printer had I known that it would not be
possible to print with black only. I used to do this all the time with
my 1280 and I got very decent results - with one color of black!

-Karl
http://www.karlwinkler.com


Have you tried printing from photoshop using the paper ICC profiles with
greyscale toggled off in the driver? Alternatively, have you tried
printing from photoshop (or any other application) with greyscale "on",
but without allowing photoshop to manage colour?
AFAIK, with "greyscale" toggled on, but using an ICC profile colour
managed process in the program that you're printing from, you're
effectively "double profiling", as the printer driver is using it's own
internal profile for the greyscale mode on top of the conversion that
photoshop is already doing using the ICC paper profile)
(I know that this sounds confusing when you're printing monochrome, but
if you select "greyscale" in the driver, you are switching colour
management ICM "on", and if you're printing from photoshop using ICC
profiles, you need ICM "off" in the driver so that Photoshop handles
colour conversion using lookup table in the ICC profile file)
Do one or the other, not both.
I don't know what the Mac profiles are like, but for monochrome,
Ilford's "Galerie" profiles work extremely well for me for B&W.
Epson Australia site has some pdfs on printer settings for ICC
colour-managed printing using Mac OS and Photoshop / Photoshop elements
available for download he
http://tinyurl.com/3x7wlb
full URL:
http://tech.epson.com.au/downloads/m...ylusphotor1800

John McWilliams wrote:

Workflow being correct for greyscale images, though, is imperative. Make
sure printing is entirely managed by Photoshop, or entirely managed in
the printer driver would be the first thing to check.

That is possibly exactly what the problem is. Selecting greyscale in
the driver, but using ICC profiles printing from photoshop is
effectively double-profiling.

On Jul 4, 1:21 am, Karl Winkler wrote:
I just tried twice to print a B&W image using black ink only on this
printer - or so I thought (color:black in "Print Settings"), and the
image is grayscale. But the prints have a very pronounced blue-green
cast in the grays.

I'm using a Mac with OX10.3.9, Photoshop CS2, etc. My color prints are
pretty good, since I've calibrated the monitor, tweaked the gamma,
etc. But so far, the B&W printing is totally unacceptable. Any ideas
how to get this thing to only lay down black ink?

Karl Winklerhttp://www.karlwinkler.com


If you are printing from photoshop, try using the greyscale gamma 2.2
under profiles, don't forget to turn off color management in the
printer driver.
From Photoshop
File - Print with Preview
select greyscale, gamma 2.2 profile
go tot the printer driver select the correct paper, under Advanced
turn off color management,
Print
Should work, though printers with grey and light black inks, (Epson K3
set, Canon Lucia, HP Vivera with "Z" printers) generally do better
with b&w.

Tom

On Jul 5, 6:36 am, wrote:
On Jul 4, 1:21 am, Karl Winkler wrote:

I just tried twice to print a B&W image using black ink only on this
printer - or so I thought (color:black in "Print Settings"), and the
image is grayscale. But the prints have a very pronounced blue-green
cast in the grays.

I'm using a Mac with OX10.3.9, Photoshop CS2, etc. My color prints are
pretty good, since I've calibrated the monitor, tweaked the gamma,
etc. But so far, the B&W printing is totally unacceptable. Any ideas
how to get this thing to only lay down black ink?

Karl Winklerhttp://www.karlwinkler.com

If you are printing from photoshop, try using the greyscale gamma 2.2
under profiles, don't forget to turn off color management in the
printer driver.From Photoshop

File - Print with Preview
select greyscale, gamma 2.2 profile
go tot the printer driver select the correct paper, under Advanced
turn off color management,
Print
Should work, though printers with grey and light black inks, (Epson K3
set, Canon Lucia, HP Vivera with "Z" printers) generally do better
with b&w.

Tom

Tom, what you suggest is basically what I do, although I have the
gamma set to 1.8 since I'm using a Mac. But one difference is that
under "Advanced" there is no option to turn off color management. The
only option is "color controls". If I look at "advanced" from there,
only the "lightness" and "contrast" sliders are active - the three
color sliders are disabled.

I'm thinking it's possible that the paper I'm using (Ultra Premium
Lustre" may be part of the issue. I seem to remember getting black ink
only with matte paper. I may try to fool around with the paper
profiles again to see if I can get that to happen.

Thanks again for all the suggestions, by the way. No response from
Epson yet...

-Karl