How to get best results converting to B&W

[webmom24]

I produce a monthly newsletter. The original newsletter is produced in color. I first edit the color photos I want to use and save them as tiffs for the color version. I then copy the file and replace all the color photos with their black & white versions which I've created through PSE5. I've been using the "enhance, convert to black & white", choosing the option in the dialog box that seems to look the best, maybe tweaking the contrast, lightness, etc a bit. The original color photos are jpeg files from a digital camera. I convert these color photos to Tiffs and then convert to black & white. My newsletter, and the photos look great both on the screen and on a copy printed with an inkjet printer.

However, I received a phone call from my printer today (just started printing these instead of having them copied) saying that the photo quality was really lousy, too much contrast etc. and that if the b&w photos I had were the same as in the file they had lost too much data for them to be able to work with them to make them better so I will have to settle for a sub-par product this month.

My question is - what is the best way to convert a color jpeg to a black & white tiff file, not lose any image quality and get a result that will print pretty much as you see it. It's very hard to edit a photo when on the screen it looks wonderful but it is apparently not up to par for printing purposes.

Thanks for any help you can offer.
Webmom:confused:

[Wendy]

Hi ...

There are lots of different way to convert to Black & White but sadly there isn't one that works perfectly for every image.

What sort of printing does your Printer do and have you shown him your inkjet printout so that he can compare results. He may be able to advise you on which way will work best for the printing system he uses ... :)

Wendy

[Chuck S.]

Webmom: Can you get a sample of the paper on which they're printing? In the case of a color newsletter I edited, the printers switched printer stock on me and the colors came out just awful. Maybe they're using a very high contrast paper that necessitates you toning down the photos to compensate.

[Wendy]

Hi Chuck ...

I found out that the printer that does our newsletter uses a high end photocopier and I have to do my conversions to fit in with that :) Once I had it worked out it wsn't too difficult to get a reasonable image ...

Wendy

[webmom24]

Hmmm... I'm not really sure about the paper. He was provided with a copy of my printout and that is what alerted him that there was a quality problem. The problem for me is that last month the photos came out "muddy", to compensate, I tried to use settings that had a little more contrast, though not dramatically so. Now the results are too much contrast and not enough midtones. <sigh> he did say he'd work with me on this for next month (I'm not holding my breath) but I'm not sure how I can design for a printing method that I can't replicate at my office... I haven't asked them whether they can convert to grayscale from the original color document... do you think that might be a possible answer? The printer also mentioned how terrible Publisher is and that I would get better results with InDesign, but if it's a photo quality issue than I'm not sure that's going to make any difference unless InDesign has some conversion tool. Thoughts on this?

Thanks again,
Maureen

[Chuck S.]

Hmmm....I agree with you that it's hard to see why Publisher would be the culprit, unless you've severely downsized the photos to put them into the newsletter.

Maybe he'd consent to your sending him one photo in several renditions for which you've documented your settings in Convert Color to Black & White. He can pick the one that prints the best and you could use those settings for the others. No harm in asking...

[webmom24]

Hi Chuck,
I spoke with the printer today and he made some recommendations to me. He said that my original conversion to B&W was probably fine but where I probably lost quality was using the brightness and contrast adjustments. If I understood him correctly it would be better to make these adjustments using the "levels" instead. My plan is to email him a couple of the photos ahead of time that I plan to use in the next newsletter and he can tell me how well they are translating and we can make adjustments from there. It doesn't help that our camera isn't exactly great and the environment that the photos are taken in is pretty poor lighting, etc. Thanks for your help. I really need to take a class (probably online) and hope to have time to do so soon. Any that you particularly recommend? I'm also hoping to have my agency spring for a copy of the CS Suite with Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign - this should also help hopefully. (Of course then I have a whole new host of programs to learn LOL.)

Maureen