How to master black and white printing

Black and white photography continues to captivate photographers with its timeless and evocative appeal. Creating a monochrome photo is a deliberate artistic choice: stripped of colour, attention turns to contrast, light and shade, texture, form and shape. Whether you’re shooting portraits, landscapes or still life, black and white photography can infuse your work with emotion and atmosphere – and learning how to translate those qualities from screen to print is a rewarding skill to master.

Producing high-quality black and white prints is easier than you might think. Canon’s professional printers are designed to deliver outstanding results across a wide range of fine-art papers, helping you transform the shadows, midtones and highlights of your digital files into beautifully detailed monochrome prints that stand the test of time.

In this guide, we’ll take you through the key steps to consider when getting started with black and white printing using Canon imagePROGRAF PRO Series printers – from choosing the right settings to the time-saving tools in Canon’s Professional Print & Layout software.

So what are the steps to creating a perfect black and white print? The first step is to calibrate the screen, which can be done using an external calibration device or a built-in solution.

Canon printing specialist Frederic Vaneesbeck explains that the correct colour temperature should be set to match Adobe RGB (1998), which is 6500 Kelvin (K). "Adobe RGB (1998) and 6,500K are the norm for evaluating colours on screen for printing purposes. Sometimes this means overriding a screen's default setting."

The screen's luminosity also needs to be set to its correct level for printing – between 80 and 120, depending on your display and the lighting in your room. "The brighter your room is, the higher the luminosity of your screen will need to be," Frederic says. "If your environment is darker, then you can the lower the luminosity."

These steps help to ensure that your black and white photo prints will closely match the image you see on the screen.

Next you need to select the correct ICC paper profile using Canon's free Professional Print & Layout software. This works as a standalone application or as a plug-in within supported image editing software, including Adobe Photoshop and Canon's Digital Photo Professional (DPP), so will slot easily into existing workflows. All photographic papers have their own individual whiteness, absorption and reflectivity characteristics, and it's essential to select the correct paper profile. All Canon paper profiles – including Pro Luster, Pro Platinum, Premium Matte and Fine Art Smooth – are included when you download the driver for a Canon printer.

If you’ve shot in colour or RAW, you’ll need to convert your files to black and white during processing. If you then discard the colour information to create a greyscale image, make sure you convert it back to RGB before printing. This ensures the printer can interpret the tones correctly and produce the full range of subtle detail in your black and white print.

Making a soft proof of your image is a useful step that can save time, paper and ink. With a calibrated monitor and a colour-managed workflow, you're able to use the Proof Setup > Custom options in the View menu to see how your image would look when printed on a specific type of paper. If necessary, you can then make adjustments so that the on-screen preview matches your intended result, before saving it as a new file. This step is vital to ensure that the final print appears as you want it to, without having to produce multiple test prints and laboriously tweak the image each time.

Which Canon printer should you choose if you want to produce museum-standard black and white prints with rich blacks and nuanced greys?

"If you're mainly doing colours, the Canon PIXMA PRO-200S is phenomenal for doing semi-professional colour prints," says Frederic. "But if you want to print black and white, I'd suggest the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1100 and the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-310. The imagePROGRAF PRO Series printers use two blacks – one Photo Black and one Matte Black – which create richer blacks and a greater range of grey tones.

"If you select the right paper on the printer driver, the correct ink will be automatically selected," he adds. "Choose Pro Luster paper, for example, and the printer knows it has to use Photo Black. If you choose Premium Matte or Fine Art Smooth, then the printer will select Matte Black ink.

"Both the imagePROGRAF PRO-310 and the PRO-1100 use LUCIA PRO II pigment inks, which provide enhanced image quality, durability and archival quality of up to 200 years¹. The PRO-1100 features 12 inks, while the PRO-310 uses ten."

The size you want to print is key. The Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-310 is an A3+ printer and the PRO-1100 an A2 printer. The PRO-310 is smaller and lighter than the PRO-1100, which may determine which fits your space better.

Whichever Canon imagePROGRAF PRO Series printer you choose, it is a cost-effective option. Canon's free Accounting Manager software, installed along with your imagePROGRAF PRO printer driver, helps with cost management as it tells you exactly how much ink is being used per print.

For bigger prints than A2, the same technology is used in larger format printers such as the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-2600, PRO-4600 and PRO-6600.

If you are looking for information on how to set up your printer correctly, read Frederic's in-depth guide to setting up your Canon pro photo printer.

Printing your own black and white images gives you complete control over the work you ultimately hand to your customers and clients. As photographer Helen Bartlett, who shoots entirely in black and white, explained while testing the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1100's predecessor during a visit to Canon's west London office: "Just being able to make sure things are absolutely spot-on, and being able to tweak and change the images, would be great," she says. "I definitely think things like Pattern Print could be game-changing for me.

"I want the perfect end product, and how you get there isn't so important. If doing home printing is the way to get the best prints then that's what you need to be doing. You can also have so much fun with it. If you were doing competition prints, for example, and seeing how different images work on different papers, I think it would be amazing."

Printed images have always been an integral part of Helen's work. "At the end of the shoot, I want the family to have something tangible, whether it's an album or framed prints to go on the wall," she says. "Having a physical print is hugely important. I want people to look at the pictures and use them. If I just gave clients a disc, even the most tech-savvy parents would probably just put it in a drawer and forget about it."

And how did she feel about seeing the high-quality monochrome prints of her images produced on a Canon professional photo printer?

"Seeing those big prints, to be honest, makes me more excited about my work," she says. "When you hold a print, that image etches itself on your mind much more than other ways of viewing it."