Black and White Printing

Using a colour printer for black and white prints has a major drawback.
It endeavours to mix the coloured inks to give a perfect grey and invariably there is a slight colour cast. This can be turned to the printer's advantage - the merest hint of blue or red to help the atmosphere.

If the aim is to create a perfect neutral grey, then that is going to difficult. An expertly created profile for the printer might do it, but even then not always.

If black and white fine art printing is going to be taken seriously, then a printer dedicated to black and white alone is the way to go. That is, a printer which contains only black and grey inks and no colours at all.
There can be no unwanted colour tinge and the extra grey inks help give a greater range of black to white tones.

Colour inks used for black and white can give a slight irredescent appearance or suffer from metamerism, which is a colour shift under different lights, although there is more to it than that.

Using only the black ink in a colour printer gives incomplete printer as there are so many gaps among the dots, where the colour inks are missing.

Note that pigment inks are going to be more archival than dye inks. Fading tests rate some archival inks as lasting over 100 years. However, they do not always work so well on glossy papers.



Lyson

There is a Quad-Black Toneable for the Epson 2100 which is a set of 3 neutral blacks, 2 warm-black and 2 cool blacks.
Adjusting the Magenta and Cyan curves will make the image warmer or cooler.

For those who want to add a little tone, there are the Small Gamut Toneable inks which are popular with Fine Art Printers. They provide a slight hue to a black and white print. The result can be neutral, a warm or cool duotone, a split tone or selenium-style toning. Hue / Saturation with Colorize can adjust this.

Coupled with a continuous ink system attached to the printer costs are greatly reduced, because of the use of large bottles of ink rather than those obscenely expensive cartridges.

www.marrutt.com




Permajet

From Permajet are the MonoChrome inks; sets of pigment inks in black and shades of black, with particularly long- lasting qualities. They use 6 or 7 black inks with different tonal shades, with 1 black and 5 or 6 shades of black, depending on the printer.

Tones are warm black, cool blue/black and a brownish black.
This gives a large black and white tonal range. A true neutral black can be achieved or the print given a hint of colour.

Permajet provide free profiles and adjustment curves for tonal control. There are also separate curves for different papers.

Permajet also supply their own papers such as, Delta Matt Fibre, Classic Fine Art and Oyster, which match well with the inks.

For some Epson printers, like the 1290 and the 2100, there is the Ink-Flow system for use with large volume bottles.
Ink costs can be reduced by 90% if a large bottle continuous flow system rather than conventional cartridges.

www.permajet.com




Inksupply.com

Inksupply.com supply UltraTone inks which are pigment inks working well on both matt and glossy papers. They are suitable for a range of printers with 4, 6 or 7 inks.

Their inks can be just black or variable tone, giving neutral, medium warm, carbon and cool finishes. They are archival inks with a lifespan rated at more than 100 years.

There comprehensive site is www.inksupply.com




MediaStreet

Niagara QuadBlack are variable tone inks. The results can be cool, warm, neutral and platinum without the need to change inks.

To control application of the inks, MediaStreet supply pre-calibrated printing curves and the inks come in cartridges and bulk continuous-flow form.

www.mediastreet.com



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