[How do I deepen the black point on a B&W image, so it looks darker?]

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

This sounds contradictory if you consider that Grayscale has 1 colour / ink channel only. Black-and-white images printed in 4c can get more "depth" by the additional ink.

My point was that I found a solution that works for me.

[How do I deepen the black point on a B&W image, so it looks darker?]

Just as an update, since folks have still been commenting with suggestions: I managed to fix this to my liking by switching to Grayscale. Now I can use Curves to actually get black in dark areas.

It also automatically fixes my sepia problem.

[How do I deepen the black point on a B&W image, so it looks darker?]

So I just loaded up the source image into its own new document (dragged the jpg into the affinity window tab bar) - the assistant said it applied a Garyscale profile to the session, and I checked the blacks - they are actually black. As such, I went ahead and cropped it again, and exported it as a new png. Then I deleted the version in my ongoing afpub for the whole book, and brought in the newly exported one - and it's STILL dark gray in comparison, even though I know that the file I created (as I can see in Finder, for instance) has an actual black point. So I'm wondering if this could be an issue with the way my ongoing layout afpub file is laid out.

My hypothesis is that what y'all have suggested SHOULD be working, but something happened in my afpub that is reducing it.

[How do I deepen the black point on a B&W image, so it looks darker?]

Thank you to everyone who has offered suggestions - but unfortunately none of them seem to be doing what I'm looking for. It appears that this is because I need the CMY values to be higher.

This image is an eyedropper of the "black" at the deepest point, after trying any / all of the above suggestions CMYK(0, 0, 0, 99):

As can be seen, it is as high as the key value will go (more or less), but it's not nearly as dark as this one:

Which was created using a rectangle tool, and dropping all RGB sliders down, or CMYK sliders up.

[How do I deepen the black point on a B&W image, so it looks darker?]

3 minutes ago, RichardMH said:

I have two ways to do something similar. First is HSL with multiply blend mode and blend ranges just applying it to the darker areas. Moves the left hand side of the histogram further left. Second is merge visible, duplicate and use hard light blend mode so the shadows get nice and dark. Then fine tune that.

Hi there, thank you for your suggestions! Unfortunately, neither of these appear to do what I'm trying to do, unless I'm just doing it wrong. The first option definitely makes the image *darker*, but it does not drop the darkest point past the dark grey floor it seems to have, instead it just has the effect of making the other mid-grays darker, which causes a lack of fidelity.

The second option seems to increase contrast, but again, does not change the darkest gray to actual black.

[How do I deepen the black point on a B&W image, so it looks darker?]

4 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Another approach, quite simple. It increases Black only and leaves CMY untouched. (similar to Lisbon's Levels adjustment but set in Curves / and in a CMYK layout document).

Hi there, thank you for your suggestion. I just tried this, and it also has the effect of just making my grays darker (to the darkest point, which is still just dark grey). What I'm looking at specifically, in that image, is the area you've got selected in the top left, as well as the darkest background trees in the middle-right.

The problem could certainly be that I'm just too picky, but I was really hoping I could get the darkest point to be pure black - because I've been testing it on an iPad Pro (M1, 12.9") which has a remarkable ability to display blacks. That Minos image actually looks great, but most of the others look a bit washed out, and I'd like them all to be consistent (and preferably deeper contrast and black, without losing much in the way of definition, or especially white.).

[How do I deepen the black point on a B&W image, so it looks darker?]

11 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

For quick B&W image adjustments, turnarounds and manipulations etc. ... it's pretty hard to beat Silver Efex Pro here for such purposes (... which BTW can be included as a plugin into APh).

I assume this is third party, and not freely available?

[How do I deepen the black point on a B&W image, so it looks darker?]

23 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

What about the selective colour adjustment filter, select Black from the Colour dropdown and ramp the Black slider all the way to 100%, if you read off a black it should now read as RGB 000

Thank you for the suggestion, I just tried this - added the adjustment layer and cranked Blacks up to 100%. But the darkest spots are still appearing as dark grey:

[How do I deepen the black point on a B&W image, so it looks darker?]

Just now, thomaso said:

 

Not really "ideally". In offset printing, there is usually a maximum for total ink coverage (TIC). Depending on the paper its around 250 – 300%, seldom above 320%, always avoiding 400% ink. If you create a document with max. black of 400% it will get reduced for print via an according profile during pre-press, or the print provider asks for a print file with a specific profile. Ask them if possible.

Okay, that's fine, I just want it to be darker than it is.

[How do I deepen the black point on a B&W image, so it looks darker?]

1 minute ago, firstdefence said:

Sound like you are looking for rich black or true black which is a CMYK colour combo black, various printers have their own flavour of rich black.

https://www.color-name.com/rich-black-cmyk.color

 

Yeah, something like that would do the trick. Is there a way I can bump the darkest ranges of my images down to that?

[How do I deepen the black point on a B&W image, so it looks darker?]

1 hour ago, Lisbon said:

Hi aettic.

Do you see the gap on the left side of the histogram?
Thats the amount of darkening you can do without clipping (losing information/detail).

And if you hold the Alt key while moving the "Black Level" slider, you can actually see the areas that are being clipped.

The same principle applies if you do this in CMYK.

Hi there Lisbon, thank you so much for your response. However, it doesn't seem to do what I'm looking for. When I'm in RGB mode, I have very little space (Which, based on my understanding, makes sense - because the image has a lot of grey range. But even when I crank it up all the way (and black out the image), it still appears as dark grey:

(The black square is my reference CMYK black, the rest is the original image, Canto 1, plate 1, blown out with RGB > Master > Black Level 100%. Same thing happens with white level if I'm using CMYK.

What I want to do is deepen the existing darkest areas from dark grey to actual saturated black.

Thank you.

[How do I deepen the black point on a B&W image, so it looks darker?]

I'm doing a historical recreation of Dante's inferno using engravings from the 19th century, and they're excellent, but have inconsistent tonal qualities. I want to make them more uniform, and the best way I could think to do that was:

1. Remove all saturation (some of the images are sepia)

2. Neutralize the warmth of the images by applying Black & White: Cold (This step was just a solution to removing the warm / red look from some of them which still had no saturation, and I'm happy to change this step if it means accomplishing what I want to do - I suspect that by sapping all the color out of the images, I'm lowering the possible threshold - see the Canto 1 image below. I have the original scans, which have inconsistent warmth, but maybe increasing the colors (on all C, M, and Y) would do the trick - I don't know how to do this either).

3. Increase the White Point using Levels : Lighten, which appears to bring up the lightest shades to actual white (without affecting my darkest shades, which are really a very dark grey).

The darkest I've been able to get is CMYK(72, 68, 67, 88), and ideally it would be CMYK(100, 100, 100, 100). I could potentially switch to RGB for the web half of the project if that would help: The plan is to design it both for print and for digital / ebook / pdf viewing. Part of why I want the blacks to be actually black is so that when they're viewed on a device with good contrast, they will appear as rich and deep as possible.

All I want to do is just deepen the blacks so they look darker.

I'm attaching a couple samples. The Minos.png page is currently the darkest one. The Canto-1-lines-1-18.png image is one of the lightest ones, at CMYK(0, 0, 0, 99).

 

A Sample of the Minos Page's deepest dark points (left) vs actual CMYK Black (right):

And another, for the Canto-1 page:

(All text and images are in the public domain; text sampled from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1867 English translation; images from Gustave Doré, published in 1861. Original Italian text by Dante Alighieri)