High quality BW zine printing

[perbjesse]

Hi all,

I am making a saddle stitched B/W zine, maybe 30-40 pages, in an initial edition of 100 copies or so. As part of that I am looking for a commercial printer that will be able to do fine printing of B/W.
Most printing on this scale seems to end up being done on an HP Indigo. In order to print B/W on these machines there are two, maybe three, routes to go:

1) have pictures converted to CMYK from grayscale and print using a normal Indigo setup. This will only give information in the K channel. This will give neutral pictures, but not very deep blacks, and some people say that this is outright not the way to go for b/w pictures claiming "awful results".

2) have pictures converted to CMYK from some Adobe RGB or some other color space and print using a normal Indigo setup. This will represent the grayscale by mixing colors from all channels. This will give deeper blacks, but people anecdotally seem to have an bad time not getting ugly color casts in their pictures.

3) There is apocryphical tales of Indigos being able to print with multiple gray inks. This seems like the way to go, but I have still not heard from anyone actually having something printed this way. Cost could potentially be an issue if it is not priced like normal Indigo prints.

Questions: Am I missing any alternatives? Do you have personal experience with any of these alternatives?
I have spent a ton of time getting a dedicated fine art b/w printing flow setup with custom RIPs and handprofiling of transfer functions. I want my zine to get as close to optimal as possible without going completely overboard price wise.
Thanks for any input you may have,

-Per

 

[jsrockit]

I don't have the answer, but I am interested in general... color and B&W. Anyone?

 

[robert blu]

I'm interested as well but never tried and no suggestions to give.

 

[Swift1]

I don't really have an answer to the OP's questions, but I did a B&W zine last year using Blurb, and I think it came out really well.
I got around the color cast issue by purposely giving my files a very slight warm tone.
In Photoshop (after scanning the roll of Ilford FP4) I converted to AdobeRGB , then converted to B&W. I then did my usual editing, and then finally I ran Levels and set the Blue channel midpoint to 0.96, and then the Green channel midpoint to 0.99.

 

[:: Mark]

I have been trying to print a book of monochrome images with Blurb.

There are definitely colour casts from the CMYK output. How much depends on how well the printers happen to be calibrated at the time your book is printed. The last run left some horrific cyan tinting on some images (excess cyan in very bright image areas). Blurb support were very helpful and successfully reprinted the books at no cost - but I am not sure I would want to risk a very large B&W print run with them.

I would be interested if anyone has found a non-CMYK print-on-demand service, as the only alternatives that I could find (Europe) have minimum orders of 500+ books. For smallish runs of hand bound zines I might try a local inkjet print service using large format roll paper that could be cut afterwards, fitting several pages over the width.

 

[jsrockit]

I've been using Blurb as well, but there has to be other options to make it cheaper...for many copies.

 

[Bob Michaels]

I used Edition One in California http://www.editiononebooks.com/ to print my photobook a few years ago and was delighted. Ben Zlotkin, head dude, has a MFA in photography and each printing is carefully controlled by either himself or his small staff. They print all their work in house on their own presses and do not subcontract out the actual printing as Blurb or Shutterfly does. My book was all b&w photos so Ben suggested printing on an older press using on black ink to avoid color casts. After sending me proof pages printed that way as well as pages printed using the common CMYK printing press, I agreed with him. I followed their instructions about what color space to use and my proof (all pages of my book) and the final press run matched my own proof prints exactly.

Edition One is NOT a print on demand printer. You specify the size of your print run and that is how many they print. The cost for the first copies is high but the price rapidly goes down. If you want 5-10 copies of your book, this is not the place for you. But if you want 100-200 copies, pricing is good considering the quality.

If I do another book, I will not consider anyone else.

 

[giganova]

I printed one book with Blurb and it was terrible! No deep blacks, low-contrast grays, blue hue ... just awful. I would never use Blurb again.

For the next book I used Ninjaprint. They have their offices in CA but print in China to keep costs down. The printer I was assigned to took as much time as I needed, walked me through the process of converting the color profiles, quality checked everything I sent them and we had a few iterations until we got it right. The result is fantastic. They also sent me paper samples which made the choice of paper much more straightforward. I even paid extra for printed proofs and they sent me this gigantic roll of paper with 8 pages on one sheet, which was phenomenal.

My advice: use a professional printing company!

 

[jsrockit]

I printed one book with Blurb and it was terrible! No deep blacks, low-contrast grays, blue hue ... just awful. I would never use Blurb again.

Blurb can be used and used well. However, you have to do multiple test books etc to figure out what works well. I will agree that I would use someone else for B&W (though I've done successful B&W with blurb), but for color Blurb is actually very easy.

 

[airfrogusmc]

Blurb can be used and used well. However, you have to do multiple test books etc to figure out what works well. I will agree that I would use someone else for B&W (though I've done successful B&W with blurb), but for color Blurb is actually very easy.

My book last book I did through Blurb and it took a few test books to get it the way I wanted it. It is expensive because I wound up with the most expensive pages but the final does look good but unfortunately the cost is high.

I would love to find another printer for my next book because of cost.

 

[B-9]

Scribus,

Free publishing software.

Use any print shop you want.

Steep learning curve unfortunately.

 

[jsrockit]

My book last book I did through Blurb and it took a few test books to get it the way I wanted it. It is expensive because I wound up with the most expensive pages but the final does look good but unfortunately the cost is high.

I would love to find another printer for my next book because of cost.

I agree with this completely. I did the tests many years ago and now know what to do to get what I expect. However, to make a book to sell, it is still way too expensive. Bob's suggestion of http://www.editiononebooks.com/ seems great actually. If you keep it small and simple (say 9x9" and no superflous extras), you can keep it relatively cheap and still have room for profit as an unknown artist. With Blurb, I feel guilty even offering it for sale. I use it only to make a copy for my personal needs.

 

[dasuess]

Scribus,

Free publishing software.

Use any print shop you want.

Steep learning curve unfortunately.

+1 for Scribus. I have used it to make multiple books with Blurb.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[robert blu]

I agree with this completely. I did the tests many years ago and now know what to do to get what I expect. However, to make a book to sell, it is still way too expensive. Bob's suggestion of http://www.editiononebooks.com/ seems great actually. If you keep it small and simple (say 9x9" and no superflous extras), you can keep it relatively cheap and still have room for profit as an unknown artist. With Blurb, I feel guilty even offering it for sale. I use it only to make a copy for my personal needs.

Interesting, from the website it seem they take their job very seriously. Unfortunately (for me) on the other side of the ocean ! It makes shipping cost prohibitive !

 

[Bob Michaels]

My choice of a printer, Edition One in Berkley Calif. http://www.editiononebooks.com/ was based on factors that probably do not relate to the majority of those here. First, my book was not a commercial effort and, in fact, is not available for purchase. One of the advantages / disadvantages of being a photographer who has a MBA, was a CPA, and CFO is that I can determine when an effort is not financially viable. No way strangers were going to pay enough for my book to cover costs, no matter how good I think it is, so why bother. Besides I have always been concerned that trying to sell my work will subconsciously shift my focus to what the market wants rather than what I feel needs to be done.

My book was an explicit desire to leave some legacy for family and friends. That meant the quality had to be first class since that is how I want to always be remembered. I determined that I would gift just over 100 copies so had 200 printed. Using Edition One, the cost of that second 100 copies was quite reasonable. There remains a few boxes totaling about 50 copies that someday will go to recycling after I permanently go "toes up" Each copy that has been distributed has a personalized inscription and I have a list of who received a copy.

Believing the content of the book was more important than even the printing, I hired an editor. That is following my philosophy that what you photograph is more important than the lens or film you use. My chosen editor was an accomplished journalist who is strong willed and outspoken. She has been fired from being one of the top photographers at a major metro daily for her editorial disagreements with the owner of the paper. Our agreement was simple, she should not hold back with her opinions and I would feel free to accept or reject them. That worked well as neither of us are thin skinned. I do think having a critical editor greatly improved my work.

I designed the layout of the book with input from my editor. I laid it out using MS Word since I am most familiar with that. Conversion to Adobe Pagemaker was a mechanical process that was easily subcontracted to someone knowledgeable for a minimal cost. The actual printing by Edition One was a piece of cake. I submitted the photos using exactly the color space and parameters they desired. The proofs of each of the 50 or so photographs was exactly as submitted. My only change to the proof was correction of a few typos that I embarrassingly let slip by.

I am considering doing another book next year. It is time consuming, 200-300 hours, to do this right. But if I follow through, I will do it exactly as I did my first.

 

[sepiareverb]

I used Edition One in California http://www.editiononebooks.com/ to print my photobook a few years ago and was delighted...

...If I do another book, I will not consider anyone else.

My experience as well. I've done two B&W books with Edition One (in 2012 and 2018), and have nothing but positive things to say about them. Their proofing service is wonderful - you can do ten test pages to hone in on your print "color" as it comes off their presses- and then even get an unbound proof to be positive. In my experience their color does not shift from proof to final product. I had one blurb book about ten years ago that showed color shift within the book.

They are also very flexible, sizing, binding, etc. Well worth a phone call to chat.

 

[tunalegs]

http://ka-blam.com/main/


Specializes in comic books and can do true monochrome printing. It's been a few years since I last printed anything through them, but the B&W comics I had printed came out fine.

 

[perbjesse]

http://ka-blam.com/main/


Specializes in comic books and can do true monochrome printing. It's been a few years since I last printed anything through them, but the B&W comics I had printed came out fine.

Interesting. So is this digital printing with multiple black inks or offset printing? What kind of volume did you do when you used them?

 

[Particular]

Does anyone have any experience with bookmobile ?

They appear to be a very capable printer, and prices from the quotes I got are slightly lower than editiononebooks.
I'm designing a book of b&w images, and I'm trying to get a handle on what my options are, and what it is likely to cost. Edition One does seem like a great option, judging from their website.

 

[mh2000]

I used lulu for a b&w book. It took a bunch of proofs and settings in the pdf to get neutral prints with expected contrast, but I was able to get there.