Working space settings for Grayscale?

Question

(Preliminary remark: I'm using the German version of PS, so some items may be called differently in the English version.)
In the colour settings of PS CS4 I can define a working space for gray scale pictures. What does this setting actually do?
I know that there is no ICC colour management for grayscale pictures, so what do the dot gain settings do? Do they just darken the display or is there more? What do the gamma settings do? What does "Black&White mean? What does sGray mean? Does Photoshop somehow add ICC profiles to grayscale pictures? If yes, which and what does it do?
So far I decided to just set "no adjustment". The reasoning is that this should display the true greyscale values on the screen. I then can add dot gain as needed manually as a final step. Does this make sense or am I misunderstanding something?
Bonus question: What about the spot colour settings? Are they applied to multichannel pictures?

Answer 1

p_d_f wrote:
Yes, there really are Grayscale ICC profiles...
Thank you. After contemplating a bit, I think I've finally understood where my confusion originated. But the more I understand, the more new questions arise.
So far I've understood that if a picture is to be displayed on an internet site or used in an office application, then I best work with the gamma 2.2 profile. If the target computer honours ICC profiles, then it desn't matter anyway which profile I use, but if the target computer ignores ICC profiles, then most computers out there will display the picture with a gamma of 2.2 (more or less) because this tends to be the default setting on most computers.
But when it comes to pictures for print, some questions remain.
To begin with, I could continue to work as I did without colour management. I would first "convert" the picture to the profile "no corrections". This would mean that "the numbers" in the picture are the same as the gray values the final user should see. And then I would account for dot gain by either applying a gradation curve or by saving as EPS with a transfer curve.
However if I want to use colour management, then I "convert" the picture to the the printer's ICC profile. Without a specialized program, I cannot create such a profile myself, even if I know the transfer curve. So either I find a suitable profile somewhere or the print shop must provide me that profile.
So far I think I understand. But now the questions.
Concerning missing profiles: Can I just take the gray channel of a suitable CMYK profile (e.g. ISO Coated v2) or would this contain some sort of black generation information which would spoil a grayscale picture?
I assume that it's possible to embed the black and white point into the profile, so that I don't have to worry about them anymore but can assign the full range of gray values from 0% to 100%. With the colour sync tool, I looked into the grayscale profiles that come with Photoshop, and as far as I can tell, none of them does set the black and white point. So I assume that despite using colour management, I have to do this by hand in the picture itself by assigning appropriate grayscale values?
If I find a profile which does set the black and white point, then I assume that this is done lossless when I set the intent to "photographic", but when I set the intent to "colorimetrc", then the shadows and lights are just clipped (which jeopardizes the idea)?
I see that the profiles contain a intent. I assume that this embedded intent will be overridden by the colour setting in photoshop?
What does the option "blackpoint compensation" (or similiar, I use the German photoshop) do with grayscale images? Does it alter the black point, so I should turn the potion off off when I set it by hand? Is there some documentation what this option *exactly* does?
The colour settings in Photoshop offers "dot gain xx%" settings, but I didn't find such profiles. Do I assume correctly that those are "internal" profiles of photohop? Are they documented somewhere?
Thanks.