Keith Cooper‘s Photography Blog

Choosing a basic printer for black and white

OK, not everyone wants to make prints this big

At Northlight Images, we’ve a range of printers, but it’s a 44″ width Canon iPF8300 I currently choose for our black and white prints (smaller 24″ iPF6300 shown)

It’s huge and not cheap …but we’re a business.

What about if you’ve been printing a few photos at home and have decided that you want to experiment with black and white photography?

I get asked about this quite often, and have put together some thoughts that also include links to some of our B&W related reviews and articles that may be of further interest.

First up, the bad news.

It’s much easier to produce an acceptable colour print than black and white with most cheaper printers.

If your current printer has just three colour inks or three colours and a black, then you are quite likely to find that black and white prints show a distinct greenish or magenta tinge under some lighting – there is no neutral grey between pure black and the white of the paper.

Black and white test image for printing

Printers have improved a lot over the last few years, but greyscale (or ‘black and white’) performance has not been a priority for the design of smaller printers.

Just trying your existing printer…

If you already have a printer and want to see how it performs for black and white, download and print out our free A4 printer test image.

See our Test Images page, for more info.

Let’s say that you’ve tried the test image on your printer and noticed a slight colour tinge.

Slight colour tints can come in from a combination of paper colour, optical brighteners (OBAs whiten paper and make it much brighter if there is any UV light present – think glowing white shirts in clubs), illuminant (viewing lighting) dependant colour shifts of inks, and profiling accuracy.

The first two of these are part of your paper choices. The third, I’ve discussed in an article about fixing colour tints, whilst the fourth one varies with your print setup (from no profiles, through to making your own).

Probably the most common question I get asked about prints, after ‘My prints are too dark and not matching the screen‘, is why people’s monochrome prints come out green or magenta.

It’s not that nice sometimes to have to tell someone that the printer they are using, just isn’t much good for B&W, and that no matter how much tweaking and test prints they make, or new papers they try, it just isn’t going to give good results for B&W.  By all means give it a go, but don’t expect too much.

If your printer works as a copier, then black and white photos were probably not high in its list of design goals.

What about a new printer?

A4/ letter sized prints in B&W

Unfortunately, I’ve yet to see an A4 sized printer that includes additional inks to expand the greyscale performance.

It is possible that the printer driver will give a moderately good black and white print on some papers, but prepare to be less than overwhelmed.

Note that printing black and white photos is not the same as ‘text’ or ‘black only’ print modes, which are designed for printing text.

By all means try out the test image on small printers – if you come across one which works well, please do let me know.

Bigger printers – Black and white at last

Once you move up from an A4 sized printer to A3 or larger (often 13″ width or A3+) the options improve greatly.

These printers are often sold as ‘Photo printers’ and whilst they will print out a letter or sheet of text perfectly well, it’s ‘photo’ that will appear in the marketing materials.

Look for multiple black inks in the specifications, for best black and white performance.

If I look, for example, at Epson’s current A3+ printer range, I see an R2000, R2880 and R3000.

The R2000 is an excellent solution if you want glossy colour prints, that look like they were from a photo shop. Or colour prints on matt paper. However, it only has one black ink (two are listed, one for matte papers and one for glossy).

The R2880 and R3000 (links are to my reviews) both have multiple black inks and offer a special B&W print mode in the driver software.

For Canon, similarly I might  look at the PIXMA 9000 MkII, 9500 mkII and the new Pro-1. As with the Epson printers, only the last two have multiple black inks, aimed at B&W printing. I note that the Pro-1 has a total of 5 black inks (4 for any particular paper type) and is being particularly marketed for its B&W performance.

Note – I’ve not had a chance to test the Pro-1 yet, and hope to have a full review before too long.

That’s fine, but too expensive…

Do you need both colour and B&W on the printer?

What if you can’t run to a bigger printer and want to try with a smaller one?

Well you could try with some different printer driver software.

For the Epson R800, R1800,R1900, R2000 pigment ink printers, you can try QuadToneRIP software (QTR – $50 shareware) which can give some excellent results.

I’d point out that it also works with the older 2000, 2100, 2200 and 2400 printers that you may find for sale (BUT -check used printers, as you would used cars)

If you get more into black and white, you might want to look at specialist ink sets, which are supported in many older Epson printers through QTR.

One major difficulty for me though, is that they are not easily available here in the UK. You are also tying up a printer for just monochrome printing.

More help

I’ll try my best to answer people’s questions sent to me here at Northlight, or I’d also suggest asking on the specialist Digital Black and White Photography group I’ve set up on LinkedIn. It’s got some 2500 members, and is aimed at people at all levels of interest and ability.

You might also want to check out the full index of all the different Black and White photography articles and reviews, here on this site.

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What’s really new at the shows?

Is it a phone or a camera?

We’ve just seen the first big trade shows of the year (PMA/CES) and I’m slightly left wondering what’s really new?

‘Tons of stuff’ I’m sure many will say, pointing to masses of articles on sites such as DPReview , where to the casual observer it’s business as usual, with many compact cameras, mirrorless (aka CSC),  the new Canon G1-X and the Nikon D4 all catching my attention.

Behind the glowing optimism of the press releases there are a few reports that suggest to me that much of the industry is being quite wilfully blind to changes in markets.

I’m looking at this from two quite different perspectives:

One is my day to day job as a professional photographer, where I want top notch image quality in certain areas of photography, and a DSLR is currently the best way for me to get it from a business point of view. I don’t  take large numbers of images, and someone wanting their work the next day is a rush job.

My other view comes from many years research working in aspects of usability and how technology impacts on people and organisations – it’s one of the things I did before becoming a photographer (see my almost entirely true bio)

It’s about connectivity

I’ve an iPhone, that I hardly ever use as a camera – compared to what I normally shoot with, it’s pretty poor (some of my initial tries at using it). To many however, such cameras are more than ‘good enough’.

I’ve also relatively little interest in ‘sharing’ photos, unless they are what I think is good and worthy of inclusion on this site or otherwise showing in public. A shared photo for me is as much about some aspect of my business, as it is about any other concerns. The nearest I get to sharing casual photos are my travel blogs, when I’m driving round the US.

But, I do photography for a living, and I know that makes my attitude unusual. It’s relatively hard for me to see past technically bad photos …and I can find it uncomfortable when people ask what I think of their photos (I will only give ‘really’ honest answers if asked a second time with a stated desire for honest feedback).

In much of the rest of the world it is about sharing and connectivity – people are getting used to sending photos immediately to others and getting rapid reactions in turn. This intrigues me, in that people are using photography in a more ‘real time’ manner. It changes their perceptions of all other photography, and that is something that as someone who earns their living from it, I had better take notice of.

Last year, of an estimated 4.4 billion image capturing devices in use around the world, 4 billion of them were in phones.

Much as with the ongoing death of film (from a commercial POV, see - Film, the numbers say goodbye) there are a few professionals who lament this further ‘democratisation’ of photography as contributing to a lowering of standards and appreciation for professional photography. Whatever… get over it, plan your business models for the next 5-10 years, not a warm view of the 1980′s/90′s.  I’ve no difficulty in more people thinking they can make some money from their photography – I just need to be better. (see – ‘Are there too may pro photographers‘)

The numbers…

How long until your compact looks as old fashioned as this?

It’s clear that recent economic events have thrown many predictions and growth curves off-kilter but I note that the global camera market grew about 1% last year (figures from GfK in December), bringing overall sales back up to 2008 levels. Last year, sales of ‘smart’ phones have gone up nearly 130%.

Numbers of compact cameras shipped are showing the greatest fall. Higher end cameras are still showing some growth, particularly the ‘compact system’ category.

More numbers just released (Infotrends via PMDA) also point to changes:

“In 2008, mobile phones with cameras were cited by only 18% of respondents as the camera used most often but that percentage has doubled over the last 3 years.”

The reaction

At the moment we’re seeing more iterations of the same, it’s almost as if no-one in the Japanese camera industry is prepared to really run with anything fundamentally new or different.  I’m minded to currently add Samsung to the list [CES info]

At the top of the DSLR range, the  Canon 1D X and  Nikon D4  are strikingly similar in specifications, once you ignore the fanboys… I’m expecting many reviews and articles to compare and contrast  them, whilst the opposing armchair armies muster round their chosen flags.

I note with interest, Thom Hogan’s comments about the predictable nature of the industry, with everyone chasing after everyone else’s tail. I’m very much minded to agree with his comments that the industry is failing in innovation, marketing and software.

At a December conference, a Nikon spokesperson said that ‘proper’ cameras were quite simply better than smartphones and asserted that there was no evident demand from customers for network capable cameras.

I find this all too similar to the attitude towards digital, from many camera and film makers some 10-12 years ago (2001 being the first year that the global market in film showed a slight decline)

But what about the big splurge in ‘mirrorless’ camera announcements? Surely this is a sign of  something new?

Yes and no – it’s currently  the ‘big thing’, so there is plenty of space in the market and we’re still at that phase where a big player (Canon) hasn’t revealed its hand and Nikon can generate some buzz with their ’1 series’.

If  I look towards Sony and their NEX system, we see another slightly different approach, whilst Micro Four Thirds moves on, although I note the comments from Olympus that they are finding difficulty in getting new companies to join up.

BTW, that camera/phone at the top of the article, it’s the Polaroid SC 1630

Futures…

At some point in the next few years I’m expecting ‘connectedness’ becoming the next big thing in the camera market, and going through all the usual loops and iterations.

However, if there is one thing that camera manufacturers have shown in the past, is that they are pretty poor at the software side of things – aspects of what you actually do with photos once you’ve taken them.

There is a big potential for a disruptive technology here – an iPod/iPhone/iPad type change.   I know that I’d put more money on Apple doing this, than one of the traditional camera companies.

I might be looking forward to trying out the upcoming 1D X and D4 myself, but I know full well that the mass market for photography is looking in a very different direction.

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My next trade show will likely be Focus in the UK, where the latest developments are likely to aimed at yet another market…

Selling ink cartridges at Focus - buy one, get one free - but wait, there's more...

A Black and white tool for colour contrast enhancement.

Colour images on cloudy days rarely have the punch that I’d like (for architectural photos for example).

Whilst there are a lot of filters you can apply (see my Nik Color Efex 4 and Tiffen Dfx filter 3 reviews), they easily fall into the ‘too many options’ problem, where you are spoilt for choice. Unless you use them a lot, it’s difficult to visualise a path through to the image you want.

It so happens that I often use Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 to produce my black and white prints. With care, you can avoid sharpening halos and all the egregious excesses of some ‘HDR style’ photos.

But what of colour?

Here’s a typical colour image from a dull day – converted from a RAW file to give a full range of tones, with no clipping of highlights or shadows.

It was a wet morning on the North Cornish coast…

First up, I’ll run the Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 plugin to get a black and white version. I’ve lightly boosted contrast and local contrast (structure), whilst a yellow filter has darkened the blue parts of the sky.

Next I’ll change the blending mode of the new  (converted) B&W layer to luminance (note that you can turn down the effect with the opacity of this layer.

I’m very much aware of potential edge artefacts (such as halos) so I run over obvious areas in a mask applied to the Silver Efex Pro B&W layer.

Note that I’ve set the mask channel to visible here, so that where I’m painting the layer out, it temporarily shows as red.

Then I’ve added a vibrance adjustment layer to give a bit more colour to the image.

A few minor tweaks (colour balance, levels) and I have an image that looks much more how I felt it did, without too much of the obvious HDR look.

I’ve deliberately ‘overcooked’ some of the adjustments here to show the effect, but using a plugin such as Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 to enhance colour images is a useful tool – particularly since you can easily alter the mask, to apply the effects to particular areas of an image.

There are many ways of achieving similar effects just using Photoshop, but I thought I’d share this particular idea.

PS I’d much rather work in better light, but I do a lot of my photography in the UK

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