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Photography Question 

Joe
 

Scanning Color Prints to B&W


Hello, I don't know much about scanning and printing. What I need to know is how to scan a 5x7 or 8x10 color photo with my HP Scanjet 537oc and print it in Black and white with Professional results using my Epson Photo 785EXP printer. I have scanned them at 600 dpi but haven't mastered the printing yet. All I have is Adobe Photo Deluxe 3.0. I have some software that came with the printer but don't know anything about it. Can anybody give me some advice? Thank you.


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December 06, 2001

 

doug Nelson
  Scan it in the B&W mode in your scanner driver and see if that meets your needs when you look at it in PhotoDeluxe. You can wait to convert it to B&W in PhotoD, if it allows that. There may also be a way to adjust the color saturation by taking all the color information out.

Print the B&W image using the color settings, if the B&W setting seems to compress the tonal range too much. You may get a cyan or magenta tinge, but you should be able to tweak that in the printer software. The printer driver should have that included; you shouldn't have to load any of the feelgood stuff the makers enclose. Don't clutter your hard drive with programs you don't really need.

You scanned at 600 ppi? That's fine if you need the image to print twice as big as what you scanned, otherwise 300 ppi is ideal. If you feed that 300 into your printer, you'll see nice prints.


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December 06, 2001

 

Piper Lehman
  Hello. This is not really an answer to your query. It's just the only way I can seem to get a question to show up on this thing.

I just started shooting slide film and need to know how to go about scanning my slides. Anyone? I have a CanoScan N650U flatbed scanner that does not appear to have slide scanning capabilities. What are my options in regard to getting my slides into my computer? HELP!


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December 12, 2001

 

Joe
  Well I tried what Doug said above but the prints look bad. Real bad. I scanned them in grey shades which look good but the pictures are real grainy. Real poor quality. Now what?
Thanks

Joe


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December 13, 2001

 
BetterPhotoJim.com - Jim Miotke

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  Hi Joe -

It would really help us to be able to see exactly what you mean. Can you save your image as a TIFF or JPEG and then append it to a subsequent answer, using the Upload Image Option on the input page? Thanks!

By the way, this is not easy. I have any many troubles and frustrations myself with printing black and white via ink jet printers. But I know it can be done...


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December 13, 2001

 

doug Nelson
  Printing a B&W image in black ink on this Epson will give you grain for sure. I've been through this with my 870. The color inks do a lot better, even if you have to tweak out a color tinge of some kind.

Some flatbed scanners don't scan B&W very well. A cheap film scanner (HP) does nice B&W scans right off the film.

Try scanning in color and convert to B&W in your imaging software. In the simpler ones, you simply convert to grayscale. In Photoshop, convert the Image Mode to Lab Color, break the image out into channels, click on the Lightness Channel, and change Image Mode to Grayscale. Discard the other two channels.

Try to find the Dec 2000 issue of PC Photo. George DeWolfe studied under Ansel Adams and Minor White. Get this: he prints B&W on an Epson inkjet, using Piezography inks. This will blow the warranty on your Epson; you'll have to dedicate an Epson to this process and not use it for anything else. But it's good enough for this pro.


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December 18, 2001

 

Ms. Shan Canfield
  I'd like to know what type of paper you are printing to? I have an Epson 1270 and get fabulous BW prints using their flat matte paper, and by turning the "color" off in the printer software. In other words I set the ink to (Black & White). Also I put the paper in with the long side (11inches the landscape way)into the feeder, and flip the photoshop file if I need to. I found that because of the grain direction of the paper, it prints better this way. Don't know if this will work for you, but worth a try!


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September 08, 2003

 
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