new digital neg system from cone

[Michael Rosenberg]

Bob,

Just to cover a few points: I only use glossy papers, and my favorite two are now Adox MCC and Ilford WT. My tobacco factory work was all done with Forte, and I bought a couple of extra boxes to store in a chest freezer when they closed to be able to make more prints.

I always dry my negs over night or with a hair dryer for immediate use. Never had an issue with image transfer. I store them all in a box and never found the need to use interleave paper with no degradation.

Mike

[sanking]

Hi Richard was your project on Gloss or Matt paper?, I think Sandy mentioned he attended a show and was very complimentary of the prints. Somehow I think your work was it.

Bob,

I assume you meant to ask this question of Mike, not Richard?

I visited Mike about three years ago at his home near Chapel Hill, NC and had an opportunity to see his well-equipped work space and many of his beautiful silver prints, some made with traditional analog methodology, others printed with digital negatives.

Mike's method of creating a profile with QTR using the Epson K3 ink set got my attention and I decided to experiment with it in my carbon printing. Essentially Mike is using a single gray value system where all curves follow the K, and on top of that he also applies a special paper curve. Previously I had worked with a number of methods to make digital negatives with the Epson K3 inkset, including color spectral negatives made with the Epson driver, and with QTR with Ron Reeder methodology. What I quickly realized was that Mike's single gray value system provided a simple mechanism to balance UV blocking density by setting the specific ink limit of each useful ink in the K3 set (only K, Y and LK are useful blockers) so that all three inks block the same amount. This is highly useful because it assures optimum overall smoothness, and it provides a simple mechanism for increasing or decreasing overall density range, making it easy to adjust for any process. The profile can also be adjusted internally for linearity with either the K curve, or with the LINEARIZE command, or in fact one method over the other. Since then I have taught this method exclusively at my carbon workshops and many people are using it, and I have also shared it with my friend Sam Wang, who uses it exclusively in crafting negatives for his cyanotype over palladium and cyanotype over gum work. I am attaching the .txt file and a .quad view for anyone who might be interested in this methodology, which is essentially Mike Rosenberg's system adapted by me for alternative printing.

In my personal work with carbon I am using a custom all-gray inkset with a QTR profile I built using the regular QTR tools, linearized with an iOne spectrophotometer. I worked briefly with the Cone Methodology 2 digital negative system. I was pleased with the smoothness of these negatives, but did not like the work flow of having to apply a correction curve to the image, so I decided to start from scratch and create my own profile.

Sandy

[bob carnie]

Yes Sandy I did mean Mike . thanks for your explanation.

[Michael Rosenberg]

Sandy,

Thanks.

Mike

[George Pappas]

Mike,

Back online..appreciate the offer. Will select a file and upload - send you a link. Very much appreciate the gesture. Will take me a week or so as I have a heavy load over the next 7 days.

Bob, look forward to hearing your experiences with Mike's negative/print as well.

We will wait to hear from Walter on availability to test the new Cone system.

Best Regards,
George Pappas

[WalkerBlackwell]

@sandy the new PiezoDN has the same smoothness (possibly more) as classic Piezography Digital Negatives but enables true linearization + custom tuning directly in the .quad

cheers,
Walker