Improvements in black and white photo books?

Christian, I forgot to add in my post that in the case of color, after I am satisfied with the photo using the color channels, I always convert it to greyscale. But I convert to greyscale as the final step. My father, who was a photographer in WWII, always said that Ansel Adams was a genius the dark room, developing his prints. Also, as a customer, would totally agree with picking the photo silk glossy paper. Also, I think the silk paper gives you a much more professional end product.

Hi Nancy,

If you want true Black and White, make sure you save your images as "Greyscale" color space. This will ensure no color is used during printing process.

I would agree higher contrast produces much more dramatic printed images. If you have ever seen the evolution of Ansel Adam's devloping of "Moonrise Hernandez", you can see how contrast does so much for black and white. He changed the evening sky from light gray to pure black in it's final popular form.

Also, blacks are *much* nicer on the Photo Silk paper as can kinda be seen in this picture comparing silk and satin.

Let us know if you have any more questions!

Hi, I posted this earlier re: BW photos:
"To people doing black and white photos, just a suggestion: I would up the contrast, and in photoshop use curves or a black and white "action" (lots of free actions on the internet for black and white that use all the color channels). If you just desaturate color photos in photoshop or other programs, it will look more grey and flat; I have come to this conclusion after doing a proof book of just black and whites, and also getting prints of alot of the photos in general."
I also asked PrestoPhoto about BW and they pointed me to this gallery:
http://www.prestophoto.com/shop/index.php?products_id=2258
My black and white photos were desaturated in photoshop b/c they were black and white to begin with and I felt scanning them in color (except for maybe playing around with some of the photoshop actions you can get on the web) was not worth it and for my needs wouldn't accomplish anything. If you are converting color to BW definitely leave it in RGB so you can play around with the color channnels to get the perfect look. I did one huge book, all black and white, as my proof book, and am upping the contrast for the "real" book based on the results of the proof book. I was really happy with the proof book, but realized I should up the contrast and in the future scan my black and whites. What do others think?

The few posts I found on printing black and white photo books were at least a couple of years old. Has anything improved in the meantime?

I'm also concerned about the advice Vio gave about saving images as RGB. In my experience, this can cause random red blotches.

Is it best to just avoid this altogether for now? I need excellent quality and I'm wondering if that's possible yet with black and white images.

Thank you
nancy