KM 5501 Grayscale print quality

[mcoolong]

Hello all,

I Have a customer with KM5501 with a IC-408 running version 2.0. They are printing color photos and they look great. When they print black and white or grayscale images they look posterized. Have you seen anything like this? And is there any work around? Customers are printing from macs running 10.5.8. Have tried converting to grayscale in photoshop. And printing the color image with the driver set to grayscale. They see this issue with all grayscale setting. Anyone else seen this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Mike

 

[Digitalkidd]

KM 5501 Grayscale print quality

I'm not familiar with the KM 5501 however what you describe presents itself in most workflows. We first must realize that Grayscale is not necessarily B&W.
It is an equal amount of RGB, or CMYK ect..., and any deviation from that equal balance when printed will give you the different shades of color you describe.
I don't know what RIP your using to process the files but you should have an area that allows you a way to treat Grayscale images. IE: In Command Workstation there is a tab under "Expert Color" that allows you the ability to treat Grayscale text, graphics, and images as pure B&W. You should have a place in your software to address this.

I hope this helps.