black & white printing….

[robmgra]

May 7, 2009 at 11:11 pm

hey guys,

so i got his problem in that i cannot for the life of me seem to get any decent black & white prints of my photographs. im based in waterford, and went to a printers to get an a1 print. i was told it would be printed on vinyl and would come out perfect, when i went to collect it i opened it up to look and got the usual….green cast running through the entire image. when i told the man i wasnt happy to pay for it he said i was being unrealistic and that i would never get the image how i want it..i just want the photo just as i processed it without the green cast? am i actually asking too much?

im just trying to get some advise on how i can get a proper black & white print…where to go ect???

any help would be greatly appreciated as i need to get these prints fast.

thanks..

[petercox]

May 8, 2009 at 9:39 am

Rob –
Clearly you need to go to a competent printer. I trust you were able to get your money back for the print you mention here?

Getting a print without colour casts is one of the basic competencies of printing. If he can’t even do that, then he’s not worthy of the name.

There are plenty of people on the forums who can do this printing for you, and give you a high quality result. I would ordinarily offer to do it for you, but I’m under too high a workload at the moment. I’d ask Steve Crozier (stcstc) to take a look at it if I were you.

Cheers,
Peter

[IOP]

May 8, 2009 at 12:24 pm

robmgra wrote:

i opened it up to look and got the usual….green cast running through the entire image

I had a chat with some people in the mini lab business about this and apparently it has a lot to do with the manufacturer. Both Kodak and Fuji tend to give a colour cast to black and white images, one is green and one is blue (can’t remember which). So the bottom line is that the vast majority of High Street One Hour type labs will always give you a colour cast in b & w’s.

The only option is as Peter suggests, go to someone who knows what they’re doing. I send all my black and white’s to Steve Crozier and I get superb results every time,

Dave

[petercox]

May 8, 2009 at 12:47 pm

Yep. High street one-hour type labs are only good for what I would consider to be ‘throwaway’ prints – prints for sharing with family and friends, family snapshots and the like.

If it’s going to go on a wall, the only way to go is with a dedicated professional printer. You’ll get outstanding print quality and image permanence, and they’ll stand over the work, reprinting as necessary to get it right.

Cheers,
Peter

[stcstc]

May 8, 2009 at 12:58 pm

rob

there are lots of issues in play with printing B&W images from digital files

the best way to do them is on a 8 or more ink inkjet

they have at least 3 black inks

if your print was done on vynal that would suggest it was a solvent based printer, they only use 4 or 5 inks and put it on thick.

solvent printers are used for the sign market, they are not proper photo quality generally and spay heavy ammounts of ink, the other issue is they are not archival, the print wont last generally more than about 5 – 10 years

the issue with labs is they generally use fuji crystal archive or kodak endura paper, which are both colour papers, and so B&w wont work well on them generally

i am in south dub, an if you need stuff doing i can give you an account on my FTP server to upload images etc

[robmgra]

May 8, 2009 at 8:59 pm

thanks lads for the advice.

thing is, it wasnt one of the 1 hour photo labs, this was graphic image in waterford. i never gave him any money, i basiclly said i wasnt happy and we went on to tell me i was being unrealistic.

steve – that would be greatly appretiated, if you could pm your details for me to uplaod images? thing is – im pushed for time with these. i have an exhibition coming up on the 26th of this month.

thanks again.