why do my prints look green

MP Guy

MP Guy

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I print with photoshop cs my color work and they come out perfect. However, whenever I try to print a B&W picture it comes out green. What gives ?
 
This is a common problem. Apparently the black ink in most inkjet printers is not truly black.

You might need to use an inkset from a third party supplier to get the black you want.

I understand that the problem with that is that you might need to dedicate a printer to B/W. Gets pricey fast.
 
What printer are you using? In the printer software choose black instead of color for the ink, works well for Epson printers.
The BW inksets are for hardcore BW enthusiasts but standard Epson inks will work fine. So, what printer do you use?

Todd
 
Your printer is trying to produce neutral greys with colored ink. This theoretically gives the best B/W print when it works, but it usually doesn't work. There should be an option to print in greyscale, which will use only black ink.
 
Jorge, in your Photoshop are you setting your mode to grayscale only? In other words, are you discarding any color info?

When I do this with either the old 720C at home or the newer HP model {mumble} at work, I get a nice neutral gray-black. Only the K out of CMYK. :)

I do know that some of those "As Seen On TV" refill kits have a weak black ink, but not really a greenish cast.
 
Alot depends on the settings (as many have mentioned), if any are interested, here is a link to a workflow I often use to print BW on my Epson 2200, with standard inks. The results are very very good, give it a try!

http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm

Todd
 
Jorge Torralba said:
I print with photoshop cs my color work and they come out perfect. However, whenever I try to print a B&W picture it comes out green. What gives ?
Click to expand...


This is not uncommon at all. I would not convert to grayscale and print from there. Inkjet printers do not do this very well. You would think that converting to grayscale and sending that file to the printer would work but inkjets are not made to produce solid blacks with their black inks alone. They achieve a much darker, richer black if you remain in an RGB colorspace and make your adjustments from there. How you convert to B&W is also very important. Use one of the LAB, Channels or Calculation methods for best results.

There are expensive RIPs on the market that work like a charm, but you can do some experimentation with your own printer and get rid of the color casts pretty well too.

Here are a couple of places to start.

http://www.redrivercatalog.com/infocenter/tips/jan05.htm

http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints4.html#Workflow_2200 (For Epson pigmented ink printers)

Accurate B&W from an inkjet is tough but it is something that can be done with some work.

Tom
 
With Epsons I find I can get prints that look OK under tungsten light but greenish under daylight (metamerism); I put this down to the likelihood that true computer nerds, like vampires, hate daylight. The only solutions I know of are (1) buying dedicated black ink sets (2) printing duotones so that there's already a strong enough departure from neutrality in what should be achromatics or (3) making real prints in the darkroom which I find gives easily the best results.

Cheers,

Roger (www.rogerandfrances.com)
 
Jorge,
The problem is worse than you describe. If you look at your finished print in daylight, flourescent, tungsten, or other light, you will probably see a different color cast with each one. It all comes from metamerism -- trying to print B&W with color dots, as others have noted. I've tried the black/gray only RIP and also separate grayscale inks on my Epson 2200. The former is more convenient, but eats up the black/gray cartridges in a hurry. The latter, which involves changing all the cartridges, allows better control of warm/cool(ness) of the blacks and is probably better if you want a high degree of control for a lot of prints. But it's a lot of trouble to change the cartridges back and forth unless you want to dedicate a printer to B&W.
Also, most on-line services print B&W with color dots, but www.mpix.com has true black and white paper as an option. I've tried several test prints with them and am quite satisfied.
 
I second the opinion about mpix bw prints, they are very good. I have an Epson C86 printer dedicated to BW, it's loaded with MIS Ultratone EZN inks, I get good results with it. But if I want something to look like it came from the darkroom, I get an mpix print. Inexpensive, too.
 
I have no trouble using an HP 7960 with the grey cartridge in and printing in greyscale. There appear to be no colour casts.

Bob
 
I ahave an epson 4000 which has the black ink in it. In the software there are 2 option color/bw and bw. When set to be it prints as expected but the resolution is horrible. when set to color/bw it prints green but the resolution is there. Cany figure this one out :(
 
My Epson printer does just fine if I tell it to print in grayscale rather than color. Even if the photo is in grayscale you will get odd hues if you don't turn off color printing
 
Nikon Bob said:
I have no trouble using an HP 7960 with the grey cartridge in and printing in greyscale. There appear to be no colour casts.
Click to expand...
The ink cartridges for the 7960 are pricey, and the color rendition is not as good as that of the Epsons. However, for trouble-free operation (no clogging) and amazingly accurate black & white printing, to me it's well worth the cost.
 
Jorge,
are you specifying a certain paper ie. Enhanced Matte or Premium Luster? Alot of problems can be sloved by assigning a profile (Edit-Mode-Convert to Profile- then choose paper profile you use), and then assuring the Epson print software ahows this too. Read the link I posted above for some good workflows for black and white printing.

Todd
 
There are several ways for you to B/W prints with the Epson 4000 without a color cast.

The first and easiest option is called Black Only printing:

http://www.cjcom.net/articles/digiprn3.htm

The second options is to use RIP software. There is actually quite good shareware and you can find it here. Some people say that Imageprint is worth the $900, but if you are not doing a lot of professional grade stuff, then Harrington QTR is worth the price:

http://harrington.com/QuadToneRIP.html

The last option is to buy a dedicated set of B/W inks. I like the MIS inks, but I don't know if they make them for the 4000...

http://www.inksupply.com/bwpage.cfm

The other options is not strickly a B/W option, but pretty close. You can convert you images into a duo/tri/quadtone in Photoshop. I've done this and it works on just about any printer.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/duotone.shtml

Hope that helps...
 
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