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Black and White pictures have dominated photography from the very earliest photographs taken in 1840 through those taken in the late 20th Century. In the early days b/w was not produced by choice, but because the technology wasn’t available to produce colour photos. In later years photographers chose to work in Black & White because of the “artistic qualities” of monochrome prints. A b/w print interprets a scene into shades of grey and relies on shape, light and form for impact. Ansel Adams developed b/w photography into a fine art and in 2006 an original Adams B/W print was auctioned for over £300,000 pounds. Although Ansel Adams did produce a few colour prints, they do not display the same aesthetic appeal as his monochrome work. For some “fine art” photographers, colour is regarded as a distraction to the actual content of a picture (although personally I don’t buy into this line of thinking, but looking at some b/w photographs taken in the Vietnam war, I must agree that they do have far more impact than colour pictures).
B/W photography is enjoying renewed interest, with many fine art, fashion and commercial photographers now producing stunning monochrome images. Converting colour digital files to b/w is easy, in many cases it can be a simple two or three mouse click operation. Producing a clean neutral tone b/w print comes complete with its own set of problems. Many photo printers, especially dye ink printers, make up the grey tones with a composite of lighter coloured inks, Light Magenta and Light Cyan. To produce a mid grey the colour inks need to be carefully mixed so as not to introduce any colour cast. Our eyes can easily spot a colour cast in a b/w print, whereas a colour print can easily hide a slight colour shift, eyes generally compensate for any slight colour shift in a print.
Many printers offer a “Print in Greyscale” option. This simply converts a colour file to greyscale (b/w). It’s a quick way to produce a reasonable looking b/w print, but for the photographer who wants ultimate control on quality, it’s not the best route. Most high quality photo printers are supplied with excellent profiles, these are generally optimised to work with their own branded media. If you intend using third party media, then you should be able to download profiles for most popular printers from their web sites, or you may want to create your own custom profiles.
There are a number of excellent profiling tools available, including the new Spyder 3 Print a dedicated profiling device which incorporates an advanced b/w profiling module. Colour Confidence has introduced a new “Colour Confidence Profiler” kit which includes;
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