Printer for B&W?

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Fuju

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I purchased an Epson XP 970 printer and it's really difficult to get b&w prints without a cast - is there a printer that can print b&w accurately that's around £150 max?
 
Any printer at that price range is going to mix all the colours to give you B&W., That's what causes the colour cast.
A print profile may help but usually not much. It's the reason why pro printers like the P600/800 P700/900 etc have a B&W Mode which only uses the blank and grey inks.
 
brman said:
Don't the cheaper Canon printers allow use of black ink only?
I think my ip3600 has both a pigmented and dye black ink and has a "grayscale" option in the driver. I have not tried it for b&w photos though.
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I'm far from an expert, but as they don't have a white, I'm unsure how a purely black ink printer would do grey? Mine has 2 grey inks as well as black so I've answered it for me, but for CMYK printers, I thought it used the colours to make grey. Happy to be re-educated.
 
Harlequin565 said:
I'm far from an expert, but as they don't have a white, I'm unsure how a purely black ink printer would do grey? Mine has 2 grey inks as well as black so I've answered it for me, but for CMYK printers, I thought it used the colours to make grey. Happy to be re-educated.
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If you think about the white issue, it is the same with a colour printer. ie none of the CMY colours combine to make white, only black ;)
White is the absence of ink on nearly all printers I think.
From what I understand (and I am also far from an expert) printers having grey inks is just so they can have smoother greyscales.
 
brman said:
White is the absence of ink on nearly all printers I think.
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I get that, but what about grey? Does it just spray a finer mist of black? :help:

Edit - I looked it up on Gemini... Seems it can be a combination of mixing colours and dithering.

Most printers, especially inkjet printers, don't actually use dedicated grey ink. They achieve various shades of grey by using a combination of techniques:

1. Mixing colored inks:

Inkjet printers typically have cartridges containing cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink (CMYK).
By varying the proportions of these inks used, the printer can create a wide range of colors, including different shades of grey.
For example, mixing equal parts of cyan, magenta, and yellow creates a neutral grey, while varying the amount of black ink adjusts the darkness of the grey.
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2. Dithering:
This technique involves strategically placing microscopic dots of different colors close together.
From a distance, our eyes perceive these dots as a blended shade of grey due to the way light interacts with them.
The size, spacing, and arrangement of these dots determine the specific shade of grey produced.
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3. Black ink only (monochrome printing):
Some printers, especially laser printers, have only a black toner cartridge.
In this case, they simulate grey by using dithering techniques with varying dot sizes and densities to create the illusion of different shades.
Important points to remember:

While most inkjet printers use colored inks to create grey, some offer a "greyscale" printing option that primarily uses black ink with minimal color ink for finer adjustments.
Using the "monochrome" setting typically only uses black ink, saving on colored ink usage for purely black and white documents.
The quality of greyscale printing can vary depending on the printer's capabilities and settings.
So, while printers don't have dedicated grey ink cartridges, they achieve a wide range of greyscale using clever combinations of colored inks, dithering techniques, and sometimes just black ink alone.
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I had assumed that my printer only used dithering to get greyscales (when set to "greyscale printing" in the driver). This was re-inforced by the fact the driver has a manual colour balance option in colour mode but only allows brightness and contrast is greyscale mode. So no way of adjusting the hue of a b&w print.

However, I think I was wrong. I just did two prints, both with "greyscale printing" set. The first one was set to plain paper and it is very clearly using just the black (and I think the pigmented black) and dithers to get grey. They 2nd print was with glossy photo paper selected. Under a magnifying glass this appears to be using CMYK inks. Although in this case it does not have the hard black of the plain paper one so I think it is just using the dye type inks. Which I guess makes sense for glossy paper.

So I was half right and half wrong :ROFLMAO:
It will do a true monochrome print but only on plain paper but for photo prints it uses all the colours. So not what the OP was asking for......
 
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