Black & white print service

Please could someone recommend a good, but hopefully economical, printing service for black & white prints.

I have been using DS Colour Labs. Whilst I am pleased with their service and prices for colour prints, I find black & white prints through them not so good. Prints have a slight magenta cast and grads show colour banding. I think this probably cannot be avoided, given I am supplying them a pre-profiled image as an 8-bit per channel sRGB file.

So, can you suggest a print service where they specifically process black & white?

I use DCSL for Black and White with no colour cast at all.

At the local camera club I submitted black and white prints.

This for our first comp



American Bald Eagle by Alan Wennington, on Flickr


and then this in the second comp which was last night



Early morning St. Mary's Island B&W by Alan Wennington, on Flickr

The competitions each had a different judge and both commented on the quality of the printing.

Are you sure there's not something amiss in your workflow. For info mine were both converted to B&W in Lightroom.

Interesting. What DSCL finish are you going for? So far I've only used the lustre finish printed on their Fuji Frontier machines. Are you going for the fine art prints?

The magenta cast on the lustre prints isn't immediately apparent but when I put them in a grey mount or they are next to other people's B&W prints there is a slight but noticeable magenta cast. I too have entered them in comps and the judges have never mentioned the cast - but then the category was "monochrome" rather than "black & white"!

Are you supplying DS with a pre-profiled image as an sRGB JPEG file? Perhaps I'd get better results if I left the profiling to them and/or supplied them in a different file format. When I profile in CS5 (applying the profile for DP Colour Frontier DP2), I can see the histograms change and they are no longer identical in RGB. Presumably this is because the profile applies different gamma curves to R, G and B. Given this, and the fact that I'm supplying DS with a colour file with only 8-bit per channel depth, I can't see how you can avoid some degree of visible colour banding. Perhaps there is some dithering option I need to enable in CS5?

I appeciate that I may be asking too much from a relatively low cost colour print service, hence I wonder what other people do for B&W.

As I said I do my conversion in Lightroom. I'm not very good with photoshop. However, I understand that in the Channel Mixer if you check the Monochrome box, then the RGB channel act like filters used for B&W film. So there should be no colour whatsoever.

I was supplying sRGB profiled jpegs , but last time I used there own profile. All my prints have been on lustre

Like you say, at just over a £1 per print for 16x12, then you can't expect miracles. But I'm certainly happy enough for now

I don't quite understand what you mean by "sRGB profiled JPEGS" as opposed to "used their own profile". I apply the profile DS provide for the lustre finish and send them an sRGB JPEG, incorporating the profile.

When I apply the profile in CS5 I can see the colour banding appear on the screen and the RGB histograms are no longer equal. Next time I'll produce another print with the profiled image coverted to B&W to see if it comes out better. Seems a bit odd, as if I have a duff profile.

From their FAQ

What profile should I assign?

Ideally you should assign our own profiles but if not then s-rgb is very close.

As I said I previously sent sRGB jpegs, but now use their profile


What is your workflow for producing B&W. If you just desaturate, then that will not necessarily produce a satisfactory B&W. This is why I mentioned the Channel Mixer in my earlier post.

Other than that I'm afraid I give in.

Sorry, I was being dense. I understand you now.

I'm sending JPEGS with the DSCL profile. Next time I'll try sRGB - at least that way the RGB histograms will be the same it so may reduce the impact of the banding.

To get B&W I apply a B&W adjustment layer (prior to flattening). It's defininitely a B&W image because the RGB histograms are equal, until I apply the DSCL profile that is. Applying their profile effectively converts it into a colour image! I'm not familiar with LR, can you observe the RGB histograms before and after applying the profile? I've just had a look and applying the DSCL profile seems to lift the black level of red to about 8.

Black and white is probably a severe test for a colour printing process and if I want anything better I guess I'll have to spend rather more than £1.10 for a 16" x 12".

Its a great pleasure reading your post.Its full of information I am looking for and I love to post a comment that “The content of your post is awesome” Great work.

Re banding - is this something that might be there in your image but perhaps looks more prominent in the print? To get rid of it I will blur the sky (where it usually appears) and apply some very slight grain/noise in Photoshop.

The print services for black and white are the ones that are illuminating and impressive for me. surely I am going to apply them in my print services.

print shop

I thought I'd update this ancient thread to say that I'm still using DS Colour Labs. Recently I noticed that they'd updated their paper profiles (apparently they did this a year ago) and I'm finding the current lustre profile has taken out the magenta cast and has much less noticeable banding. It also gives a bit of a lift to the shadows, especially if you use the perceptual profile conversion.