Why are my mono prints brown?

TelePaul

I really enjoy printing at home and get awesome colour results from my Canon MG printer. The problem is that when I convert to mono, the resulting print seems a little tinted with brown, possibly even purple? It's hard to describe, though it's clearly not black and white as it should be.

Has anyone any thoughts on what's causing this? I don't see how it could be a monitor calibration issue as it's a purely greyscale image.

Here's the shot if it helps:


Pidgeon House1 by paulrichardoleary, on Flickr

abyss

Probably you have to do good calibration process. And it's not too easy without knowledge and equipment.

What you can do:
Printers usually use CMYK colours (Cyan Magenta Yellow Black ) to print images.
Is your picture in RGB or CMYK?
In RGB case convert it to B/W and later into CMYK. Check all channels (separate CMYK in PS). If B = Black channel will do omit (just clear) other, save picture as CMYK TIFF and try to print. It's not the best way, but can slightly help.
You can also try work with you printer driver - maybe you have B/W profile options...

sineadw

It's probably your settings. Are you using the correct ICC profile for the printer/paper combination? Do you have your management policies set? For example, if you set photoshop to manage colour (recommended if you're not using rip software) then you *must* turn off colour management in the printer.

It's generally considered wisest to leave the file in RGB and allow the software to convert to CMYK..

DaireQuinlan

Probably some contaminants in your fix or stop baths. Do you thoroughly wash your trays before use ?

CabanSail

Quite the opposite to wet processing. Getting Monochrome out of a printer is a LOT harder than colour. If your printer has only 4 inks CMYK then it's damn near impossible and you will get a colour cast. A well calibrated printer with 7 or 8 inks can produce a good result. The sort of machines that stcstc uses will get good results

I have seen prints from a converted Epson 9880 which uses 7 shades of black ink. The results were close to very good fibre based prints from a darkroom. The cost was AU$400 (~€300) per metre of 44" print.

stcstc

generally this happens when the print only has a single or dual black inks, the printer is then trying to create the shades of grey from the coloured inks


and it never quite works very well

magicbastarder

if your print is coming out brown, take a photo of it, change the hue so it looks blue, and print again!

Kenny Logins

Can you force the printer to use only the black toner/ink in the print dialogue window?

stcstc

if the printer has 2 or less black inks you wont be able to force it to produce anything remotely neutral normally

for B&W neutral prints you need a printer with a min of 3 shades of black in in them generally

magicbastarder

colour me ignorant, but isn't there only one shade of black?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj84tfS7ag4

DaireQuinlan

magicbastarder wrote: »

colour me ignorant, but isn't there only one shade of black?

Take some mushies some day and look long and hard at a magpie and try and tell me there's only one shade of black :-)

stcstc

well my 2 epson 44" printers both have

light light black
light black
photo black

actually there is a matte black too, but that replaces the photo black

:D

abyss

As far I know it is quite simple printer - he mention at the start model "Canon MG printer" - maybe this one... http://www.adorama.com/ICAMG5220.html?utm_term=Other&utm_medium=Shopping%20Site&utm_campaign=Other&utm_source=gbase