articles/Printing/abw-page2

ABW - Fine Tuning Your Monochrome Output - part 2 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

by Mike McNamee Published 01/08/2012

Most papers are coated to be blue (cool) as this creates an impression of 'brightness' - indeed the ISO measure of paper brightness concentrates on the blue part of the spectrum only.

To match this base tone the inks from the printer must be arranged to deliver a similarly cool tone. In technical jargon this is called 'mapping to the white point'. In other words the icc profile measures the base white during profile making and sets out its stall to match this in the illuminant colour chosen (which traditionally is D50 for profiles). If this match is not good, the very light greys (which contain a substantial contribution from the paper tone) will be a different colour to the deeper greys which are built up with lots of ink. The problem tends to go away as the shadows are reached because the eye is not as good at discerning colour in deep shadows. Overall, then, this is the requirement - the ink laid down has to match the coolness or warmth of the paper and should ideally do so right down the tone range from highlights to shadows.

Toned or Biased?

Photographers are a fickle bunch and whereas one portion of them are striving for perfectly neutral prints (whatever that is!), the others are looking to significantly bias the tone in one direction or another - traditionally with a bunch of chemicals of rather dubious health benefits! Roughly gold toning cools a print, thiocarbamide toning warms a print towards sepia, selenium pushes towards purple/magenta (and don't write in - this is a generalisation of toning!). The one tone bias that is generally unfavoured is the olive green that can result from certain development conditions with silver halide prints, an effect particularly disliked by Ansell Adams.

Please Note:
There is more than one page for this Article.
You are currently on page 2

• ABW - Fine Tuning Your Monochrome Output page 1
  
• ABW - Fine Tuning Your Monochrome Output page 2
  
• ABW - Fine Tuning Your Monochrome Output page 3
  
• ABW - Fine Tuning Your Monochrome Output page 4
  
• ABW - Fine Tuning Your Monochrome Output page 5
  
• ABW - Fine Tuning Your Monochrome Output page 6
  
• ABW - Fine Tuning Your Monochrome Output page 7
  

Contact Mike McNamee

1st Published 01/08/2012
last update 21/07/2022 08:46:22

More Printing Articles

There are 0 days to get ready for The Society of Photographers Convention and Trade Show at The Novotel London West, Hammersmith ...
which starts on Wednesday 15th January 2025