B&W Images Washed Out for Book Printing

[Ben36004920mxdy]

I have recently had two proofs made for a book that I have written and illustrated. I would like to print in black and white if possible to keep costs down, however I've been having trouble with the grayscale images losing their contrast and rich blacks. The second proof was done in color, and the sepia images look great. I've put them side by side for comparison (the b&w appears more washed out in person). Is there something I should be doing to the b&w files to avoid the loss of values? I edited them in photoshop, converted to grayscale, increased contrast, saved as PNG's, dropped into my InDesign book file, and then exported for print. Thanks!

[pixxxelschubser]

How about with a Black&White adjustment layer?
I've added one default setting and one custom setting

[Ben36004920mxdy]

I haven't done much with B&W adjustment layers in the past, but I can certainly give it a try. Would the correct usage be to edit the color image this way and then save in CMYK? Or should I still convert to grayscale?

[pixxxelschubser]

I would probably convert the file to greyscale in Photoshop. Or, depending on your workflow, work media-neutral in RGB in your layout programme and convert to CMYK when outputting the print file with Device Link Profile.

[Stephen Marsh]

Presuming a single/short run PoD book publishing service.

Mono/Black & White printing will use a single toner/ink, therefore it will naturally have lesser density. It costs less to print and doesn't have concerns with maintaining neutrality.

Full colour print will offer greater density due to having four toners/inks buiilding the shadows. You may have issues with maintaining neutral tones.

For the sepia or colour images, were these supplied as RGB or CMYK files? What ICC profile or conversion did the images or PDF conversion use?

Are the proofs close to what you see on screen for both mono and sepia/colour, particularly density and detail?

Are the proofs inkjet proofs or actual prints from the digital press used for production on the final stock?

[Ben36004920mxdy]

Thanks for the questions, I'll do my best to answer-

-For the last question, these are proofs done on the digital press and will be the exact same as final production/ final stock. 

-The color (sepia) images are very close to what I see on screen. The mono are not close- they appear rich and dark on screen, and the value range is reduced significantly in the proof print.

-I supplied the color images (I believe) as RGB. I converted those to grayscale when saving files for the mono print, though when I open those files in photoshop now, they still list RGB as the color profile. If I can find where to look I'll let you know the ICC profile. I placed the images in InDesign and exported the PDF- I didn't change any of the settings (high quality print). 

Also, the printer is BookBaby and they use "HP Indigo and Xeikon printing presses". I talked to a rep about how to prepare the mono images, but they couldn't give me any advice

[Ben36004920mxdy]

This may help-apologies, as I am somewhat new to this

[Stephen Marsh]

You need to soft proof your images using your working CMYK with black simulation and/or paper white simulations for the colour images. Use a custom proof setup for Working Gray.

https://helpx.adobe.com/au/photoshop/using/proofing-colors.html

It could just be the photo, however, the paper white appears quite dark, which reduces the visual contrast compared to a monitor. Same for the blacks. Having a calibrated and characterised/profiled monitor and using softproofing will provide a much closer preview. I also notice that the photo of the colour/sepia version appears to have lost a lot of shadow detail, which if accurate, may need to be compensated for.

EDIT: Now that I know that they use a 300% ink limit version of GRACoL 2006 Coated, use that and not your default Working CMYK.

[D Fosse]

Don't use Dot Gain profiles. They are rather outdated generic black ink profiles that aren't used anymore. They don't correspond to any modern offset printing process and will not represent the tonal scale correctly in InDesign.

Use the K component in the CMYK profile appropriate for the printing process. You need to ask the printer which one! US Web Coated (SWOP) is the Photoshop default just because there has to be some default, but it is not valid outside North and South America (and may not even be the correct choice there). Always ask.

Click the working gray rolldown in Color Settings, and navigate to the appropriate CMYK profile. This will appear as "Black Ink - <CMYK profile>".

Once you have chosen this as working gray, it will appear in the Convert to Profile list, and you can convert in the normal way. The file will then print as a CMYK file, but on the black plate (K) only.

As Stephen points out, K-only black appears rather washed out compared to full 4-color black. You'll just have to accept that.

[Stephen Marsh]

Use the K component in the CMYK profile appropriate for the printing process. You need to ask the printer which one! US Web Coated (SWOP) is the Photoshop default just because there has to be some default, but it is not valid outside North and South America (and may not even be the correct choice there). Always ask.

By @D Fosse

From my experience over the years with people coming to this forum, all of these PoD providers have the same/similar instructions, use U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) or U.S. Sheetfed Coated v2 (and then go on to confuse or contradict themselves regarding total ink limits).

They use digital presses, which will have a custom CMYK profile for the machine and the stock in use (coated cover weight stock, uncoated text weight stock, etc). They do not give you this production orientated digital device output profile. What they do is have an intermediate "simulation" profile based on a standard offset condition. They convert incoming RGB data to the simulated press condition before it's converted to the digital press profile. For CMYK data, they will generally assume that the CMYK data is already as per their instructions and I assume that they use this as the source for the conversion to the device profile. They could pass on the input CMYK values direct to the printer, however, I doubt that is common. If they detect that ink limits are above their recommendations, they will either ask you to re-submit, or they might just convert them to the lower ink limit without notifying you.

Looking over what they suggest, there is a custom 300% total ink limit version of the standard GRACoL 2006 characterisation data:

https://support.bookbaby.com/hc/en-us/articles/220379028-Do-you-have-a-color-profile-I-can-use

This is the CMYK profile which should be used for conversions and softproofing, not the default colour settings (I often joke that when it comes to colour settings, there is a reason why they have fault in their name).

They do mention below that if the page is B&W then you should convert the image to grayscale mode. If you want better density for these images, you would have to pay for full colour printing on these pages, which also probably means more expensive coated paper in addition to the colour print cost.

https://www.bookbaby.com/pages/pdf/Book-Printing-Preparation-Checklist.pdf

[Ben36004920mxdy]

Thank you all for the detailed information and suggestions! I have done photo editing and graphic design for quite a while, though softproofing and changing color profiles isn't something I have had to do very much- sounds contradictory, but it's just the kind of design work I was doing. I hate to ask for extreme hand-holding, but if someone could walk me through the steps in Photoshop (and if need be InDesign) to assign the right profile, proof the images, and correctly save them I'd greatly appreciate it! I had made them grayscale as bookbaby suggested and even edited them darker as I've had washed out mono images from them before- unfortunately this latest proof is still not where I need it to be.

[Ben36004920mxdy]

EDIT- the link you provided also included instructions for installing and integrating the color profile- thanks very much! Assigning the profile and proofing the images doesn't seem to greatly alter the appearance on my monitor. Unfortunately, I imagine beyond just darkening the mono images a huge amount and hoping for the best, I would need to print more proofs to see if I can finally get b&w images to print with decent dark values. This is not really feasible with the cost of proofs unfortunately. I can't deny that the sepia images look much better, but the cost for the consumer will be much higher unfortunately

[Stephen Marsh]

If the darkest areas of the image are 100% in grayscale mode, then they can't be any darker for that digital print device, unless you pay for full colour. You obviously have to trade off tonal values under solid to resolve details in dark areas without plugging the shadows.

[D Fosse]

The thing is that Photoshop has proper grayscale color management support, which means that any grayscale profile will be represented correctly on screen and in print.

But InDesign doesn't! It has full color management for RGB and CMYK, but not grayscale.

InDesign will just take the grayscale numbers and represent them as if they were the black (K) channel in the working CMYK profile. That's why you need to convert to (the K component) in that CMYK profile. Then the equation will turn out correctly, the numbers have already been converted to the actual InDesign output.

Whenever you don't have full color management, you need to prepare the file in the actual destination color space. There will be no conversion from source to destination. They have to be the same.

[Ben36004920mxdy]

Thanks again to everyone for sharing their knowledge. I have gone over my original image files again and soft proofed using BookBaby's correct printer profile. Honestly, there is very little change in the image appearance, and if I was to just go off my monitor, I would assume the printed grayscale images would look good. Of course, I have a proofed book in hand and know that they don't. I am also aware that printing in grayscale will lose some depth and contrast, but it's just not acceptable as-is. Would you recommend I simply darken the images far beyond what looks "correct" on my monitor and hope for the best in another proof? It's obviously possible to print b&w and get decent rich blacks. Heck, I've got a bunch of books on the shelf (not mine) with nice b&w printing on the same cream paper that I'll be using. I've published one other book with them, and so far, I've never gotten a b&w proof that was acceptable. I'll feel silly if there's some simple file prep I have missed, but as of now, I'm really not sure what to do.

[Stephen Marsh]

Thanks again to everyone for sharing their knowledge. I have gone over my original image files again and soft proofed using BookBaby's correct printer profile. Honestly, there is very little change in the image appearance,

Did you simulate black ink and paper white?

but it's just not acceptable as-is. Would you recommend I simply darken the images far beyond what looks "correct" on my monitor and hope for the best in another proof? 

By @Ben36004920mxdy

You could try proofing half a dozen variations with increasing darkness, however, I believe that you are fighting physics.

If your images have 100% values then they can't get darker. Yes, you can push other shadow values higher at the risk of plugging shadow detail.

From your original proof photos, your sepia version suffered a lot of shadow detail loss compared to grayscale, but you seemed happy with that.

[Park Street Printers]

I've done quite a bit of grayscale book printing for customers, both locally at my print shop, and online through various providers. We always shoot for a good balance of the whole image, so that midtones aren't blown out into the highlights or shadows. I think that the grayscale image you first posted looks pretty close to ideal. As @Stephen Marsh noted, the sepia version has too much density in the shadows, so significant detail is being lost. If you have the darkest portions set to 100% black density, then you really can't go any darker. I'd almost always prefer to preserve image detail, as opposed to losing it to get a heavier print. I've never had any complaints, or, indeed, anything less than very favorable reviews for my book work.