B&W Printing Problems

[mindful]

I occasionally come across a problem when printing images that have a soft edge transition for white to black.  What happens instead of the smooth transition I see on my screen in Photoshop, I see distinct bands of grey shades.  What also happens is the soft black edge isnt even black.  I also see a cyan halo on this edge and the dark 'black' looks as if it is bronzed.

I have seen this happen on all the Epson printers I have owned in the last 8 years, from the 2000P to the 2200 and now the R2400.

I am wondering if I am doing something wrong here as I have tried various different settings in Photoshop and on the Epson printer driver itself.

Any ideas?

[drew]

I occasionally come across a problem when printing images that have a soft edge transition for white to black.  What happens instead of the smooth transition I see on my screen in Photoshop, I see distinct bands of grey shades.  What also happens is the soft black edge isnt even black.  I also see a cyan halo on this edge and the dark 'black' looks as if it is bronzed.

I have seen this happen on all the Epson printers I have owned in the last 8 years, from the 2000P to the 2200 and now the R2400.

I am wondering if I am doing something wrong here as I have tried various different settings in Photoshop and on the Epson printer driver itself.

Any ideas?
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Mindful,
There are so many imponderables in your question that I simply do not know where to begin to help you with this problem. Are these film or digital images? Are they 8 or 16-bit? Are they black and white or colour? How do you manage colour? Are the files Tiffs or Jpegs or Psds or what? Are you printing out of Photoshop or something else? What are the driver settings you are using? What type of paper? etc, etc,........and that is without having even seen an example of your problem. Can you post some images to help us identify the problem? If you are printing onto RC media using the 2400, then the densest blacks will appear bronzed. This is a well known effect of the ultrachrome inkset which has only been slightly improved with the K3 inks.

[mindful]

Mindful,
There are so many imponderables in your question that I simply do not know where to begin to help you with this problem. Are these film or digital images? Are they 8 or 16-bit? Are they black and white or colour? How do you manage colour? Are the files Tiffs or Jpegs or Psds or what? Are you printing out of Photoshop or something else? What are the driver settings you are using? What type of paper? etc, etc,........and that is without having even seen an example of your problem. Can you post some images to help us identify the problem? If you are printing onto RC media using the 2400, then the densest blacks will appear bronzed. This is a well known effect of the ultrachrome inkset which has only been slightly improved with the K3 inks.
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This is a digital image that I'm working with.  [a href=\"http://www.mindfulcreations.com/Gallery_Floral/imageplateL.asp?imagename=Floral+Abstract+7&filename=images/FLW-6003.jpg&imagenum=FLW-6003]http://www.mindfulcreations.com/Gallery_Fl...agenum=FLW-6003[/url]  Looks fine on the screen.  I'm working in 8bit, originally colour converted to b/w, tiff file and using the epson matte paper for now.  Once it's used up I will be switching to Hahnemuhle.  The area that looks terrible in print is the soft area to the left.  It starts out as a bronze then a slight dark ring around the edge of the flower.

[mindful]

Hi Drew,
I thought let you know that I found a way to solve my problem.  A friend pointed me to the QuadTone RIP product, so I gave that a shot and voila! no more bronzing, no more coloured halos and no more banded gadients in shading.

Seems to me that the Epson printer driver introduces too much color into the B&W printing process.

On a side note - I used Epson enhanced matte paper for this print and the Epson printer driver wouldn't let me use the "Advanced B&W"mode, even though the documentation said I could.  

Anyway, I'm a QTR fan now!  If only I can find some QTR Hahnemuhle profiles...