B+W printing with HP Z3200PS vs Canon IPF8400

[abiggs]

What is EWS?

[artobest]

Embedded web Server.

[deanwork]

First of all I would never use the Z3100 or the Canon with those retarded "color wheel" abw type of set ups. No they aren't linear and never will be that way.

With my Z I made a really good profile that is super linear and I print out of RGB but tone with a Hue Saturation adjustment layer set at 40 Hue and 2 Saturation. I"ve been doing this for about 6 years. It is a perfect lab neutral with no metameristic failure and killer dmax. It works equally well on matte or gloss fiber media. They are beautiful, not as dimensional as Piezography K7 on matt media, for sure,  never will be, but very nice in their own way.

The IPF8300 with True Black and White is even easier, and WAY more linear and precise than that crazy Canon half ass solution for monochrome. The difference between day and night really. All you need is to plug in your Eye One and linearize any of the stock curves they have available for similar papers. I tried using those curves on similar papers and they were ok , but no where as precise as making my own custom curves, but you need a good spectro for sure. It is very easy though, and very fast.
If you look at the color inks being used with this approach, for neutral set up you are using no color ink at all. You can't do this with Epson, and even with my Hp Z if I don't use some color ink it's going too cool. But the HP color inks are so amazing permanent and you need so little of it that it never bothered me to use it that way. They don't look different from daylight to warm tungsten spots.

BowHaus needs some serious rethinking of their website. That is the absolute worst documentation and lack of a step by step tutorial that I could ever imagine anyone coming up with. And that is from someone who totally loves their product and uses the hell out of it. It's like they don't care, and maybe they don't. I think their main concern is using it for themselves and if anyone else would like to take advantage of it cool, if not , that's cool too. They certainly aren't making much cash out of it. They are very tiny company, really a mom and pop outfit that makes beautiful prints in La. Their prints on gloss media have always been spectacular.  I'll tell you one thing, it certainly makes my life easier and I'm never disappointed with their neutral output on the Harmon Baryta or similar papers. One thing everyone loves is my making the neutral Canon prints out of that TBW on the warmtone Harmon. It is giving you a slight split to a warmer highlight. And that little change makes the whole thing so much more dimensional. Its kind of an illusion of a greater feeling of depth than you really have. However, I do spray them with the Hahnemuhle spray to make them as smooth as a silver print.

[smjphoto]

Thanks Deanwork! Very encouraging post. Do you have any resources to recommend to help mastering the True B&W ?

Stuart

[deanwork]

I'm going to try to write this up ( along with some of my concerns about lack of documentation ) on our blog during Christmas. I"ll send you a link when I do. If you are polite you can also email them and ask specific questions and they have always been very helpful to me. Just don't start complaining about their software. If you do that you probably won't get an answer. Sometimes with my latest version of the Eye One spectro, it won't be recognized by the software. Then I close out the software and restart it and it has always worked after that. The readings have always been very accurate and their grayscale is big enough to read with no problems.

john

[Roscolo]

BowHaus needs some serious rethinking of their website. That is the absolute worst documentation and lack of a step by step tutorial that I could ever imagine anyone coming up with. And that is from someone who totally loves their product and uses the hell out of it. It's like they don't care, and maybe they don't.

I'll second that. Still waiting on a Windows version.

I wonder if I could use TBW successfully and print from MacOSX running on Windows 7 using VirtualBox? Anyone done this? Might be a holiday project!

[Ernst Dinkla]

The IPF8300 with True Black and White is even easier, and WAY more linear and precise than that crazy Canon half ass solution for monochrome. The difference between day and night really. All you need is to plug in your Eye One and linearize any of the stock curves they have available for similar papers. I tried using those curves on similar papers and they were ok , but no where as precise as making my own custom curves, but you need a good spectro for sure. It is very easy though, and very fast.
If you look at the color inks being used with this approach, for neutral set up you are using no color ink at all. You can't do this with Epson, and even with my Hp Z if I don't use some color ink it's going too cool. But the HP color inks are so amazing permanent and you need so little of it that it never bothered me to use it that way. They don't look different from daylight to warm tungsten spots.

Would it be possible to use the Canon driver color mode for B&W, create a QTR ICC profile with Photoshop curves + linearisation and get a Dmax, linearity and paper white B&W tone similar to TBW?  When printing a B&W image through the color mode is the Canon driver keeping out color ink as much as possible like the HP Z3100 driver? As long as TBW does not run on Windows and with my preference to use Qimage I would go that route if I ever buy an 8400. I found the creation of more Photoshop curves to drive an HP Officejet filled with a custom quad inkset not that difficult after I made the first curve set. Paul Roark does it all the time for Epsons. The curves in the Canon case do not even have to partition grey inks but only add some color if needed, the linearisation + profile creation is quite automatic with the QTR tools. Of course one can find ICC profile creation software that can do similar jobs but I have seen Dmax clipped quite often then. Still do not understand why that should happen.

--
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
December 2012, 500+ inkjet media white spectral plots.

[deanwork]

I don't see any reason why you couldn't do that, print out a target with the 8300, measure it in QTR, use that as your profile. I mean you could theoretically do this either rgb or 16 bit grayscale since the 8300 utilizes 16 bit grayscale, then print out of Canon driver or use Q-Image. But that's a lot of trouble and it doesn't do everything that TBW does. I'd rather just buy a used cheap Imac and use that as a print server for BowHaus.

What I like about TBW is that their existing pre-made curves are optimized very well for print color and ink limits for select types of media. In other words they have done that ink limiting part of the process for you already, and that's the time consuming part. The other thing I really like about about their curves is they way you can custom tweak the print color by using their slider for EACH of the color channels. It's really set up well and totally intuitive. What you might spend a week or more doing in Studio Print you can do in no time. You see exactly what channel is being used and can  bump it up or bump it down slightly on the fly, then save that and give it a name if you like it as a permanent curve in the application to choose from in the future. That way you also see exactly what "problem" hues to stay away from if you want. OR, you could create a really intense monochrome hue if you wanted to go that way. Haven't done that here.

I don't know how the politics of these big printer companies function, but I do know they have never really gone all out and supported a third party software developer to create something outstanding for black and white. TBW is the only thing that has been tolerated in an even half ass way by Canon. But they all seem to live in the fictional world that their OEM solutions are just great, but they never are. Though with the HP Z set up using a custom rgb icc it's pretty damn good and easy as long as you don't mind using Photoshop to assign your color tint. But even with that printer and permanence of its color inks, it could be a lot better. Imagine if you had a software where you could load one more gray channel giving you a real QUAD tonality, or 6 or 7 gray channels ( plus color in the others)  even into the Z and linearize THAT with all that dmax and color toning capability of the other 5 channels! Now that would be a monochrome printer to die for. Just killer, and the prints would last forever. HP could be famous for it. But it won't happen, they are just too scattered of a corporation and they are more interested in "designers" these days than photographers. So fickle.

john

[Jeff Magidson]

I'm going to try to write this up ( along with some of my concerns about lack of documentation ) on our blog during Christmas. I"ll send you a link when I do. If you are polite you can also email them and ask specific questions and they have always been very helpful to me. Just don't start complaining about their software. If you do that you probably won't get an answer. Sometimes with my latest version of the Eye One spectro, it won't be recognized by the software. Then I close out the software and restart it and it has always worked after that. The readings have always been very accurate and their grayscale is big enough to read with no problems.

john

John; I would thoroughly enjoy reading any insights you have on TBW. Better documentation of the software could really boost its user base.