D-Max and ABW mode with epson printers

[IWC Doppel]

I have a 3880 and have used ABW mode for printingt B&W and have settled on matt fine art papers, by preference.

In addition I will be having icc's made for my three chosen papers, essentially for colours but want to understand more about the underlying grey scale with colour profiles and what makes the ABW 'better' for D-MAX

1. Will an icc paper profile offer greyscale calibration intrinsically ?
2. If not how do you calibrate for grey scale and is this seperate to colour profiling (I have read a little on QTR) ?
3. Outside of the 'iterative' adjustment within the advanced ABW driver (ge shadow tonality etc) how do you set the correct grey scale using ABW mode, is there a process that I might follow ?
4. What does the ABW driver offer over a calibrated colour profile and why do reports show higher D-Max

Tks

[IWC Doppel]

I have already covered this in part in an earlier thread but still a little unclear about the grey scale adjustment options

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=73715.0

I did also speak to epson regarding the availability of natural cold press as a media type but have been unable to get to the bottom of whay my version of LR does not have this, the reason I am interested is I wonder if I could have more success by usinng different media types

[Alan Goldhammer]

"I did also speak to epson regarding the availability of natural cold press as a media type but have been unable to get to the bottom of whay my version of LR does not have this, the reason I am interested is I wonder if I could have more success by usinng different media types"

The paper setting is not in LR but in the Epson print driver.  You don't say what OS you are using but on my Win7 machine I have this paper setting from downloading and installing the latest Epson driver set.  It also has settings for the other 'new' fine art papers from Epson.

"1. Will an icc paper profile offer greyscale calibration intrinsically ?"

Only if the profile targets include a set of B/W patches.  I include these when I make my profiles.

"2. If not how do you calibrate for grey scale and is this seperate to colour profiling (I have read a little on QTR) ?"

You can use QTR to prepare ABW profiles for Epson printers and the process helps make the B/W response more linear.  Eric Chan covers some of this in his notes page for the Epson 3800 printer and those comments are equally applicable to the 3880. 

"3. Outside of the 'iterative' adjustment within the advanced ABW driver (ge shadow tonality etc) how do you set the correct grey scale using ABW mode, is there a process that I might follow ?"

You can select from a series set 'curves' within the Epson print driver, this is explained in the manual

"4. What does the ABW driver offer over a calibrated colour profile and why do reports show higher D-Max"

ABW uses less color inks and gives a higher Dmax that is measurable and varies with respect to the type of paper used.  In my own testing measuring a black patch with an i1Pro, I have seen anywhere from a 5-15% increase in Dmax

Finally, you can use ABW profiles only with Win OS, Mac OS does not permit their use (this was covered on LuLa when the new Epson driver was released for Mac OS and you can find this in the archives).

[IWC Doppel]

Alan,

Thanks very much, I am unfortunatley MAC 10.7.5, Lightroom 4.3 so I know I can't use the Chan ABW profiles. I'll have a look at the manual for printer curves

Adrian

[IWC Doppel]

Well....

I finally got there using contrast, brightness and tonality adjustments. Now what I see is what I get without using softproofing for two matt fine art papers (The doft proofing profiles look way more washed olut than I acheive on paper), I have very, very minor loss of shadow detail. But pulling this back did not improve the image (only the test pattern). Indeed forgetting test patterns and just looking at challenging images the settings I now have produce the best image. I can now adjust on a calibrated MAC and hit the print key