21
June 2002
B&W
Printing
One of the biggest problems with BW pictures created on inkjet printers
is that they have a slight colour cast, generally a greenish tint. This
is due to the fact that most printers use all of the colours when printing
monochrome. The Stylus Photo 2100 (and 7600 - 9600) have a new item
of software called Gray Balancer. The Gray Balancer is a utility for
adjusting the Gray balance on inkjet prints.
Before
we look at the Gray Balancer in detail, I am going to print a BW picture
as a before sample, then I will put the new Balancer software through
its paces and see how much we can improve the tones. I will upload the
after pictures later on. I am using Premium Semigloss Paper for the
test. (Printer ready within 25 seconds of turning power on, the A4 print
takes 5min 30sec to complete).
|
|
|
|
The
Original file (downsampled)
|
PSG
paper - slight purple cast on picture
|
The first picture looks far too purple in my scan, although the actual
print doesn't look anywhere as bad under daylight - just a slight hint
of purple. I am just going to scan in the same picture with a Kodak
Gray scale.
|
|
|
This
is one of the problems with doing a live review, the colours on
the print are nothing like the ones above.The Kodak colour patches,
which were taped to the print and scanned in at the same time,
seem to be spot on.
|
I printed the same image on Archival Matte paper, this print looks superb
and closely matches the screen image, but the scan still has a purple
cast.
I
have just received an e-mail from another webmaster Ian Lyons at
www.computer-darkroom.com,
and he points out what I suspected.
"The
problem you see actually plagued the life out of scanner based profiling
software because the scanner was seeing something worse than we are.
Some scanners use Xeon light source and others a fluorescent. If the
inks themselves fluoresce the scanned print will do the weirdest things."
I
have just finished talking with Epson, who tell me that there will be
a colour shift when viewing the print under different lighting conditions.
The Gray Balancer software will help you to get the perfect colour/tone
in your prints based on the conditions you intend viewing them in. The
scanner light is very intense and perhaps accounts for the extreme colour
shift. I will move on and test the Balancer software - but I will look
for a technique that will faithfully reproduce the correct tones for
our review.
The
Gray Balancer
This
utility software is used in conjunction with an reference chart to set
a desired tonal colour in a monochrome print, or correct an unwanted
cast such as the one in the purple girl above. The utility is automatically
installed with the print driver but can be un-installed at any stage.
A detailed 122 page Acrobat PDF manual is also installed, although a
printed version would have been more useful.
|
|
|
The
Gray Balancer reference chart
|
www.photo.i.co.uk
