Scroogie Boy

Canon PIXMA Pro-200s black & white printing update

· Carl W. Irving

As a follow-up to my Canon PIXMA Pro-200s first impressions, I have to admit that I was wrong – well, wrong in one very specific way. But, before I talk about that, I do need to cover what hasn’t changed: I still really like this printer and it is fantastic for color prints and color-managed black & white prints.

So, to get to the part where I was wrong, I did some experiments with the Canon “Black & White Photo” mode on more papers and this is definitely a mode that is very paper-sensitive. I wouldn’t exactly say that I’m seeing metameric failure by the dye ink, but I definitely see different tints on different papers – which then are magnified by different lighting. I am sure that there is some degree of ink metamerism in what I’m seeing, but the main effect is more of a paper-specific color tint in black & white mode.

You could call it a “problem” in that it does limit paper choices somewhat and requires a bit more experimentation to get things right, but it’s a problem I am willing to live with in return for the brilliant color prints. It is also a problem that people work around by printing in color mode with a good paper-specific ICC profile. I remember watching YouTube videos by FotoSpeed (a paper supplier in the UK) where they strongly recommended using custom profiles to make black & white prints. At the time, I thought it was a little incongruous, given how others like the black & white print mode. Having done some test prints, I think I understand this a little better: the black & white print mode is a fairly paper-independent one-trick pony when the ICC profiles are custom to each paper specifically. It’s possible that I could get better results by using the advanced adjustments in Canon Professional Print & Layout, but that seems like a lot more work than just using a custom profile.

The experiment:

  • I printed the same black & white picture on four different papers (three Canon papers and one Red River paper) using “Black & White Photo” mode in the Canon driver.
  • After drying overnight, I laid them out on the floor alongside an 18% grey card.
  • I photographed them under different lighting conditions, processed the pictures in DxO PhotoLab to set the white balance according to the card, de-skew the picture and turn the vibrance dial to the maximum.

Each picture has the same papers in the same order, clockwise from top left:

  • Canon Pro Luster Photo Paper
  • Canon Matte Photo paper
  • Red River Aurora Art White 300
  • Canon Pro Premium Matte Photo Paper

Turning the vibrance dial to the maximum accentuates (in a way that isn’t apparent to the naked eye) some of the color discrepancies in the prints. Repeating the exercise with different light sources also shows some of the different responses:

I don’t think I can give any meaningful quantitative results from this tiny experiment using comparatively inaccurate instruments, but my main conclusion (other than “make sure you have decent lighting”) is that the black & white prints are sensitive to both paper and the light source used to illuminate them.

It’s also interesting that the Red River Aurora Art paper performs very differently in this print mode – circling back to the FotoSpeed comments earlier, this could be why they prefer printing with a custom profile: the black & white mode “special sauce” depends on the Canon paper used. A subsequent experiment on the same paper using the Red River-provided custom profile does seem to confirm this (the print has a much more neutral tone and density).