Having done a considerable amount of reading and research into this, it seems to me that there are basically two schools of thought about the use of Black Point Compensation (BPC). I guess that it shouldn't really come as a surprise, given that there are two possible settings!

BPC is controlled from within the printing dialogue within Adobe Photoshop and is provided to allow you to ensure the range of colours that your printer is asked to create falls within those offered by the printer/ink/paper combination you are using. This means that if, say, your printer profile reckons that the deepest black is 15% black, then setting BPC on makes sure that to tonal range is adjusted to fit in from 15% through to paper white.




If you turn off the BPC then there are three possible consequences

1) Nothing happens
2) The print becomes lighter. This will happen if the black point in the image is higher than the one offered by the printer. This results in a low-contrast, washed out, thin print
3) The print becomes darker. This happens if the black point in the image is lower than that offered by your printer combination. This means that the shadow areas of the image will block up and become solid black.

Clearly the last two results are far from ideal, so why run the risk of encountering them? Just leave BPC on!

Tags: printing