Attempting to optimize a few images for a POD book, but consistency in image quality is the perrenial problem with POD. Received the first proof copy containing 24 black and white 7cm x 7cm images, all from the original publisher (we're doing a licensed translation) and seemingly of consistent qualitiy. 4 images turned out brilliant, and the rest, beyond mediocre, just inferior.
The photo files are EPS. All are showing as grayscale except for 2 which are color space RGB (Adobe RGB profile). Of those two, one is terrible like the majority (flat, washed out, looks almost solarized) and the other is brilliant. The other 3 images printing well, are in grayscale, so RGB doesn't seem to be conclusively part of the answer or problem.
All the rest are grayscale, and in ID the profiles show as NA.
Other than abandoning POD (impossible now, and past projects with similar images have turned out well), what can be done, what are the fundamentals of image optimization for this printing process?
Thank you for the input.
Luca