Brilliant black and white home prints

Dan Mold proves that printing high-quality black and white photos at home isn’t as difficult, or as expensive, as it might seem

- Dan Mold

THE MISSION

Make quality B&W prints at home

Time needed

One hour

Skill level

Intermediate

Kit needed

• Photo paper

• Photo printer

• Adobe CC

Photography trends come and go, but black and white images are a classic that are always in vogue. So it stands to reason that you might want to immortalize a selection of your favourite black and white photographs as a physical print you can hang on the wall. And while you shouldn’t be intimidated by home printing your black and white masterpieces, there are a few things to consider if you’re serious about physically replicating exactly what’s on your computer screen.

You might be surprised to learn that colour management is still hugely important when printing in black and white – to avoid producing washed-out grey tones – so a good printing profile is a must. Fotospeed offers free custom ICC profiles with their own-brand papers, which we covered in PhotoPlus issue 169, and the paper manufacturer Fotospeed also offers a number of generic profiles for printer and paper combinations, see: http:// bit.ly/fotospeed_profiles.

So long as your monitor has been recently calibrated, a good printer profile gives you peace of mind that what you see on screen is going to very closely resemble what comes out of your printer, particularly handy when soft proofing your images.