Selling prints, need advice on how to make black show as black

[creativeborn]

Hi

Trying to get my photos to professional quality, my problem is they print out ok but the black just isn't black enough. I'm using a HP K7100 printer and PhotoShop CS4

Any ideas?

[HappySheep]

I have a canon and up the black setting to 10, leaving the other colour settings at the default. I find that makes solid colours 'solid'. I've tried the whole calibration thing, but I use a laptop which is harder to calibrate than a monitor. Maybe when I make my millions I can afford a separate monitor!

Judith

[Mojo_77]

You need to have a true black point, in Levels make sure there are no missing pixels to the left of the histogram, if there are move the slider to the right a little. As regards printing, your prints may be suffering from metamerism, this is where blacks look slightly green or bronze in a certain light. There's not much you can do about this save for getting a printer that uses multiple black/grey cartridges, or changing it completely to monochrome, but then obviously you'd lose the option of colour printing. Apologies if you already know any of this.

[ali.shout]

If you order at photobox.co.uk they'll send you a calibration card so you can set your monitor to match the print.... also, use CMYK instead of RGB... true black in CMYK should be C:40 M:40 Y:40 K:100

Private message me if you need any more detail

[flb89]

in indesign there is a printing option of making black black sounds stupid but mayb there is something similar in photoshop? havnt come across it myself so you would have to do some searching

[ali.shout]

Just Spotted this thread from a while ago - if anyone is still interested, you have to set the document type as CMYK in photoshop before you do any of this...