Black and White on a Design Jet 90/130

[enduser]

Having just read about the Canon 9000, and how it produces a great B & W with just the black cart, and I know my HP 7960 will do the same, does anyone know how to make a DJ 130 do the same?

Or any other way to get a neutral B & W out of one. And, no, the downloadable HP black and white profiles do not do this, I've tried them.

Thanks.

[enduser]

I now have a partial answer to my question. Deep within the Design Jet menu is a set of color adjustment sliders, and by default they are set to zero. The scale runs from -5 to+5 for CMY and K.

By playing with these adjusters I have got a B & W result on my canvas that is pretty well acceptable, Basically the K slider is +5, the magenta is -5 and the cyan and yellow are around -2 to -4. There seems to be enough latitude in this menu item's adjustments to go from green through magenta and settle somewhere near a pretty good black.

Of course it holds only for the one media, and changes when you run a calibration, but, if you have an insistant customer for whom B & W is a must, with a bit of work it's quite acceptable. Better than any of those special profiles from HP that we downloaded.

[jo-1]

. . . And, no, the downloadable HP black and white profiles do not do this, I've tried them . . .

Hi enduser,

I've tried the HP profiles as well and yes - the B&W profiles from HP seem to be crap or I may misuse them completely

The best B&W results I get are without any tweaking simply applying the appropriate ICC profile for the used paper and print out of Photoshop or Lightroom with Application managed color and the appropriate setting s in the printer dialogue (the ones that have been indicated by the ICC profile or when you did the profiling)

Pre cautions have to be following:

1.) Do a printer test and look whether all print heads are working well?
2.) Do a print head alignment before every important printing job or whenever the printer rests for some weeks
3.) Do the self precalibration of the HP 130 built in linearisation fpr every new batch of paper
4.) Use either the HP paper and the appropirate profiles or do custom made profiles for your used paper
5.) Do the profiling of the papers with at least a drying time of 2 to 3 days

If you follow these steps you will experience fantastic B&W large format prints without having to manipulate in the printer menue.

Application managed color with the appropriate ICC profiles leads to outstanding prints with the HP 130 NR

hope this helps

jo-1