[Leica] That Epson trick (was Leica digital) plus a bonus

[John Brownlow <john@pinkheadedbug.com>]

Lots of folks asked for this so here it is. Kind of on-topic, in that if
you're shooting with a Leica, it's got a good chance of being b&w, and if
you're printing b&w digitally, it's got a good chance of being on a 1270.
Anyway here goes (and thanks to Carl Schofield for the method, Epson for the
idea, and Jerry Olson for the choice of Quadtone).

Problem: printing grayscales on an Epson 1270 using RGB inks and the regular
Epson profiles onto Epson paper tends to produce a slight but annoying color
case in the blue/green direction. Printing using black ink only produces a
dead neutral print, but at the cost of increased dithering and (in my
experience) loss of shadow detail.

Solution: This method produces (for me) almost exactly neutral grayscales
using the color inks on Heavyweight Matte paper.

1.  Work on your image in grayscale until you are happy with it.

2.  Convert it to a quadtone by choosing the mode-->duotone dialog box.

3.  Load the 3rd quadtone in the preset 'Grey Quadtones' list that's in the
goodies folder. This is the one that's identified as 'Bl CG10 WmG4 CG3'

4.  Convert the quadtone to RGB using mode-->RGB

5.  Go into File-->Page Setup and under 'options' set your paper type and
select color inks. Set 'mode' to Custom and press the 'advanced...' button.

6.  In the 'advanced' dialog, select 720 or 1440 dpi, high quality halftone,
high speed printing off. If you choose 720 dpi turn 'fine detail' off too.
Select 'Color Controls' and set Gamma to 1.8 (unless you know better). Set
'Mode' to 'Automatic'.

7. Okay all these dialogs to close them.

8. Print from Photoshop. In the 'space' drop-down menu select 'RGB' and
check Printer Color Management on.

9. Watch a smooth, almost perfectly neutral print appear!

Technically, what the quadtone does (I think) is give the image a kick of
warmth in the midtones that seems to cancel the blue/green hue, while
keeping the highlights and shadows neutral.

Oh yeah, here's the bonus: the high-pass method of sharpening. Try it before
resorting to Unsharp Mask, as in some images it produces a lot less
artifacts. Courtesy of Jerry Olson on the inkjet list. Make an 'action' of
it and it's no more hassle than unsharp mask.

>Make a duplicate of your image or layer. It will appear on top of the
>original. Select Hard light as the blending mode. Choose from the filter
>menu "other" then "High pass". You can use any amount you want, but
>usually about 4-6 pixels is plenty. Then you probably would want to
>reduce the opacity of the duplicated layer to about 75 percent, and
>merge the two. You haven't even added any unsharp masking yet, and
>already the image is much sharper. Now you can add just a touch of
>unsharp masking.  This way, you won't get nearly as much grain or
>artifacts as you would if you just used the unsharp masking filter.
>Also, if you are working with a color image, you can REALLY get a lot of
>different shades of red to appear in an image that would otherwise just
>be one or 2 shades. This is really nice in flower images, when reds tend
>to blur into just a couple shades.

Personally I find 4-6 pixels and 75% opacity too high, and end up at 2-4
pixels with 40-50% opacity, but it works a treat on some images.

- -- 
Johnny Deadman

http://www.pinkheadedbug.com