Epson 1400 Printer

I think I made a mistake when I bought this printer because it simply will not give me a true B&W image. Whatever setting I use it always results in a print with usually a quite heavy cyan colour cast. This is even when the original has been converted to B&W and I am not relying on the printer to interpret the colour and change the details to B&W. It does not matter what paper surface or type I use.

I have been told that there is no way on Gods earth will I ever be able to get this printer to give me a true B&W image - are they correct. The only difference /change I have made to the printer is it is fitted with a 'Continuous Ink System' as apart from the standard miniscule cartridges.

I am unfamiliar with this particular printer but as a generalisation it is very difficult and often impossible to get satisfying B&W from many, perhaps most, consumer or business level inkjet printers. The main reason is that most printers, even when set to print greyscale, still mix colours in order to obtain "black". Why don't they just use the black ink? Because unless it is printed using a dot screen, most general purpose black ink does not realistically produce a good range of greys. Colour laser printers often use just such a screen to print photographs.

Some modest six colour home photo printers can do reasonable B&W but the really good stuff comes from high-end models that have several black inks. It is also possible to buy completely different ink sets for some of these printers and these sets have only black/grey/brown inks. A lot of people who print top notch stuff on inkjets also drive the printer using software called RIP (raster image processor) which is like a highly refined printer driver that replaces the generic ones that come with printers and computers.

In the ten years I have been into digital, printing B&W has been one of the most frustrating aspects of my journey. I've only found satisfaction in two ways. One is using an expensive twelve colour Epson injet - the other is printing on good old chemically processed, cheap RA4 colour paper. I do not actually own the means to do either - I pay a lab to make the prints for me. RA4, in a carefully monitored environment, can produce very good B&W for many purposes and it is quite remarkable that it only uses three dyes, none of which are black, yet it can produce a very convincing solid black. In case some APUG tragic chimes in that I've overlooked the obvious because there are ways to print digital onto silver halide paper, I choose not to go down that convoluted path because if I want silver halide prints I'll shoot the pictures on film in the first place. OzJohn

With a good paper profile the 1400 can do b&w reasonably free of color casts. It can make outstanding b&w prints if you replace the native inks with a monochrome ink.

My previous printers also Epson 2 x 1200 models gave quite reasonable B&W images because you could shut the colour channels off. Yes they were more grainy than the darkroom version but that didn't always matter. I have tried colour profiling but have never gained the exact result I wished for in B&W.

I much prefer B&W created in the darkroom anyway and I think that is the main reason I will be keeping my set-up running and use the 1400 for colour only.

I think the culprit is the continuous ink system you have installed. I am having quite neutral prints with default epson claria inks. The prints have a slight magenta cast just after printing but after few hours it is all gone.

Epson printers that support Advanced Black & White (ABW) can make very fine b&w prints with no additional profiling.

Herzeleid said:

I think the culprit is the continuous ink system you have installed. I am having quite neutral prints with default epson claria inks. The prints have a slight magenta cast just after printing but after few hours it is all gone.

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It was the same with the original ink sets, in fact it was a magenta cast rather than cyan.

Look at the Piezography K6 inks, assuming you never want to print color on the printer again.

L Gebhardt said:

Look at the Piezography K6 inks, assuming you never want to print color on the printer again.

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Piezography K6 works fine in the 1400, but you will need to create your own QTR profiles as Cone has not profiled that printer. This is not a trivial exercise and it will require a significant investment up front.

Using the correct paper profile provided by Epson or the paper manufacturer should get you close to neutral. Really good 3rd-party inks will match the Epson OEM gamut; yours are giving a different color cast, so they don't match, making it that much harder for you to get a neutral black. A 6-color dye printer isn't going to produce exhibition quality b&w.

Epson ABW is the simple solution. I'm pretty sure Epson can send you a sample print, or a local Epson dealer can print one for you.

I am afraid I have never even heard of Piezography K6 inks, or are they known by a different name over in UK?

However the convenience of being able to print in a true B&W will have to wait and I will continue to suffer (?) for fumes from the witches brew in the darkroom for B&W. The colour will do for the moment on the 1400 although I also dabble (well actually i do quite a bit) of RA4 colour printing as well.

color casts in blackand white

Color Casts in Digital printing
This may be an answer to which no question was asked, but for what it's worth
I have recently switched to digital printing as I can no longer work in my darkroom. But the first print I made from scanned negatives showed me that although I can still make prints, a problem exists in the color of the black and white image. I do only black and white photography after a lifetime as a graphic arts color cameraman running a high end drum scanner ( it put the food on the table) My first print on cheap letter stock was a neutral black The next one of the same image , printer and ink was on high end gloss photo stock. It had a greenish tint. The reason I mentioned graphic arts is that this same problem occurs in four color printing and the inks, if not the separations, are usually blamed as the reason the colors are not true or bright enough. But the reason is not the inks but the paper. Both digital and graphic presses use transparent inks. If they didn't intermediate colors could not be obtained. The printed image's color is determined by the reflectance of the light passing through the transparent ink's pixel or halftone dot and some of the spectrum being absorbed and reflected back out to the viewer. The paper surface and absorption determines what is reflected back through the ink.
In other words the color of the image is in the paper not the inks!
This concept was a hard sell to veteran pressman till they switched stock on a hard to obtain color and saw a real difference.
Before changing inks or recalibrating the system, try changing paper and see if the results are different .