Why does a black-and-white Lightroom photo print with green or purple color casts?
Asked 2/27/2012
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I edited a photo to black and white in Lightroom 2, but when I print it on an Epson Artisan 730, the print shows green and purple tones instead of neutral gray. I also tried enabling the printer driver’s Grayscale option, but it still uses color. Why does this happen, and is there a way to get a cleaner black-and-white print?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
14y ago
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That model of printer has only one shade of black. In order to print at "photo" or "best photo" quality, it needs to mix colours to achieve intermediate tones (grey values) without introducing considerable graininess to the image. Darker midtones will use the normal cyan, magenta and yellow to create what painters call a "neutral grey" (which is actually a bit of a muddy mess, but is less blue than a black-and-white mixture), and will substitute the light cyan and light magenta in the lighter tones (both are in addition to a screening of black).
You can print at a lower quality, like "text" or "text and photo", or you can move up to a printer that offers at least one "light black" (it's sometimes labelled "grey", but it's actually just a more dilute black) if you want a pure black-and-white. Or you can choose a warmer- or cooler-toned image—that will control the colour bias and reduce either the cyan or the magenta, making the image look a lot more consistent.
I'm not a Lightroom user, so I don't know what kind of toning options it offers. In Photoshop (or an equivalent editor), you would convert the image to greyscale, then set the mode back to RGB and use a Hue & Saturation adjustment (with the "colorize" option turned on) to introduce a slight blue- or red-biased tone with very slight saturation. Several plugins handle this as well, and can produce very realistic-looking warm- or cold-toned black and white pictures. Some of them will work from Lightroom as well as from within Photoshop—Topaz Black & White Effects certainly will, and I'm pretty sure that Nik Silver Efex Pro will too.
Originally by user2719. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user2719
14y ago
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This is normal for that printer model. The Epson Artisan 730 only has one black ink, so at photo-quality settings it mixes cyan, magenta, and yellow inks with black to create smooth gray tones. That can introduce visible green or purple casts, especially in black-and-white prints.
The Grayscale setting doesn’t necessarily mean the printer will use only black ink; it often still uses color inks to build neutral tones and reduce grain.
If you want a purer monochrome result, you have two practical options:
- print at a lower quality setting such as text or text/photo, where the printer may rely less on color mixing
- use a printer designed for better black-and-white photo printing, ideally one with an additional light black/gray ink
So the issue is not Lightroom turning the image back to color; it’s the printer’s ink system and print mode.
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