Black and Blue >> Blacks printing with a blue caste (and how to avoid)?

[Max Renn]

I'm hoping someone here can offer some good printing advice. I've had several cards printed using Printed.com (using a HP Indigo 7500) that have had a slightly bluish colour caste in shadow areas (on both "TruCard" and 350gsm silk) >> I'm curious as to how one might avoid this in favour of a more neutral (and deeper) black. Is this related to ink levels or colour conversion, or does this particular printer have a bias? I'm using Photoshop and Indesign, and the image was Adobe RGB (1998) through the entire workflow prior to exporting to PDF from Indesign, whereby I converted to FOGRA29 (selecting Convert to destination - Preserve Numbers) as instructed. The total ink level was set at 300%.

I'm using a recently calibrated Asus ProArt monitor (set to the AdobeRGB (1998) colourspace), and the Photoshop soft-proof shows no such colour bias, so I'm at a loss to know what steps might be taken to remedy this (and as Printed don't offer a proofing service, and have been unable to offer advice beyond converting to FOGRA29, it's difficult to experiment with alternative methods to see what might yield a better result).

Any advise would be greatly appreciated!

 

[nex7photo]

All my b&w printing goes to Ilford labs online, quality is excellent it's not worth doing it yourself.

 

[viewfromthenorth]

Try different labs using the same image on 6x4 prints to keep costs down. Ilford are very good (for monochrome only) but are extremely expensive, and in my opinion, not enough of an improvement over DS Colour Labs to warrant using on a regular basis unless you do a lot of gallery exhibitions.

If printing yourself or on an inkjet printer, you should get some profiles done for your printer and paper to minimise or eliminate colour casts. I use fotospeed paper and fotospeed will provide free profiles for their paper.