Optimized Printing in Advanced Black & White Mode

For those who enjoy printing black and white photos but don’t use a printer equipped with Carbonprint inks, the standard solution is the Advanced Black & White Mode (ABW) available in the printer driver of many high-quality photo and large-format printers. This ABW mode allows users to produce neutral or toned prints—warm, cool, or anything in between.

Advanced Black & White Dialogs in Canon® and Epson® Drivers

As every printer owner knows, the printer driver only offers media types supported by the manufacturer. When printing on such supported papers, you select the matching media setting in the driver, and the software automatically applies optimal settings behind the scenes. These settings, including ICC profiles, are installed along with the driver and are available for both color and black-and-white prints. This usually results in quite satisfactory output—as long as you’re printing on OEM papers.

However, many photographers and artists use premium third-party photo or fine art papers from brands like Hahnemühle®, Ilford®, Canson®, Innova®, and others. When printing in color, you can use a custom ICC profile tailored to your preferred paper. After saving the profile in the proper system folder, your software can access it, optimizing print color and tonal values.

But what about black and white printing using ABW mode?
In Advanced Black & White Mode, ICC profiles cannot be used. Your control over tonal output is limited to the settings provided in the driver—again, optimized for OEM papers only. If you choose a third-party paper and try to print in ABW mode, you’ll need to select an OEM media setting that approximates your chosen paper. The result may be acceptable, but often lacks precision in tonal distribution, especially in shadow and midtone areas.

To solve this, we offer a service: the Custom Grayscale Correction Curve (.acv format) for ABW printing. These curves are tailored to the tonal characteristics of your chosen paper and allow you to control the grayscale distribution for optimized results—even in ABW mode.

Important: To apply these curves, you’ll need a compatible image editor, such as Adobe Photoshop. Currently, we are not aware of any other software that supports .acv curve files.

How it works

Your grayscale image (black and white photo) contains tonal values ideally ranging from pure black (0) to pure white (100). You’ll recognize this from your camera histogram or RAW editor. In a perfect world, these tones would translate directly to paper. For example, a tone of 30 in your file would print as a tone of 30 on paper.

Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case. Shadows and midtones often print too dark, causing loss of detail. That’s where our correction curve comes in—it tells the printer to lighten or darken specific tonal areas so the print matches the intended output.

Visual Example of a Correction Curve:

In the illustrated example, the darker tones in the lower half of the tonal scale are lifted (lightened), while highlights require only slight adjustments.

By applying this curve to your image before printing, you ensure accurate grayscale reproduction that matches the paper’s unique characteristics.

With our ABW correction curves, you can achieve professional-grade black and white prints on third-party papers. Each curve is individually crafted to suit a specific paper type, giving you reliable tonal consistency and enhanced print quality in ABW mode.

Our service you will find here.