Best way to prints with black background?

[teekay]

I often make images with a lot of black background but am reluctant to print them 8x10 or larger because of the tremendous amount of black ink that would be used by my inkjet printer - the page would be wet with it. Any suggestions? Take them down to a photo lab and get them on regular photo paper?

For example, here's one I took yesterday:

http://community.netidea.com/teekay/pick/pick.htm

[FlyingPete]

Nice shot!

I send off nearly all of my images to a photo lab, if its all black or all white, makes no difference to them. The running costs can get quite high on an inkjet doing this, esspcially as some make dark areas (not real black) out of the primarys (CMY), and only use the black for really dark areas. I have had this issue on my Epson, in fact my Epson uses the primarys when print grey scale, as it provides better resoution than using black alone.

[robertwgross]

Excessive black is not a problem if you use something like Epson Premium Luster Photo paper. Just to be safe, I dry my prints for about one minute over a warm lightbulb.

---Bob Gross---