Economical to Print a Photo Book with Piezography K7?

[Alan Mevis]

I am trying to get a monograph of a portfolio printed. All the options either require a huge upfront cost for offset printing or a cost per unit that's too high to sell the book if done with an online printer plus poor quality there. I am considering investing in a printer and K7 Carbon ink set to do the printing myself. Before I take this path, I need to have some idea of the capacity of the K7 set. Does anybody have a ballpark idea of how many 8x10 prints on average can be made from one K7 set of 125ml bottles? Thanks.

[mdm]

Quite a lot. Just do it, if you run out of ink you probably wont need to get a whole set, just a bottle here or there.

[Lenny Eiger]

The ink isn't the real cost, its the paper.

Lenny

[joncone@cone-editions.com]

Piezography inks, when used with the curves we produce for QuadTone RIP, consumes about 20% more ink than does Epson ABW or the RGB driver. We produce a much tighter dithering pattern in the highlights and quarter tones because we use more shades of ink. So, if you can find a production rate from Epson for their inks you can find ours by adding about 20%. This tighter dithering allows Piezography to print at a much higher resolution and we also produce tens of thousands of gray levels. This should be more than worth the extra ink consumption!

[Frank Petronio]

Nice to see Jon here, thanks for posting.

[paulr]

I was going to produce an artist's book with Piezo inks, using the Hahnemule photorag paper that I printed on regularly. The biggest issue I had was that the inks would tend to transfer from one page to the facing page. The paper surface itself was also very fragile and prone to flaking off.

I know that this is a particularly fragile paper, but don't know if other papers are completely free of these issues. Normal fixatives, including Lasceaux, weren't helpful. What worked (and looked amazing) was varnish, but the varnishing process was so labor intensive I gave up on it.

I'd be curious to hear if anyone has experience with newer papers. A book done by piezography would be totally stunning.

[joncone@cone-editions.com]

We did change our formulations about 2010 to include additional encapsulation of each pigment particle so that all of the five ink sets (Carbon, Neutral, Selenium, Special Edition and Warm Neutral) are now all matte and glossy compatible (which we announced earlier this year). With five layers of encapsulation we are able to get each pigment particle to adhere well to glossy and baryta media while at the same time perfectly accepting the Piezography Gloss Overprint. That extra encapsulation now may have some effect on off-set. Prior to 2010, only Selenium and Warm Neutral inks were also glossy compatible. I do not know when Paul used the inks to make books. I know that Laurent Lafolie in France produces a lot of books with K7 and uses Hahnemuhle Bamboo for some and another paper I do not recall for others:

http://laurent-lafolie.fr/pochettes/
and
http://laurent-lafolie.fr/installations2/

Another Piezography user, David Lykes Keenan prints books with K7 on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag:

http://www.dlkphotography.com/LAM_page.php

It may be worth it for you to contact these two guys and find out if they do anything special to prevent offset or if offset is not an issue for them.

I was going to produce an artist's book with Piezo inks, using the Hahnemule photorag paper that I printed on regularly. The biggest issue I had was that the inks would tend to transfer from one page to the facing page. The paper surface itself was also very fragile and prone to flaking off.

I know that this is a particularly fragile paper, but don't know if other papers are completely free of these issues. Normal fixatives, including Lasceaux, weren't helpful. What worked (and looked amazing) was varnish, but the varnishing process was so labor intensive I gave up on it.

I'd be curious to hear if anyone has experience with newer papers. A book done by piezography would be totally stunning.

[Frank Petronio]

Booksmart in Rochester produces one off and short run artists books but I haven't kept up with what they've been using. Nice books though and perhaps worth considering? I know they are also doing some letterpress, which would compliment their inkjet prints in a book. http://www.booksmartstudio.com/

[paulr]

Thanks so much for the links, Jon. I'll save them in case I ever revisit the project. I was using Piezo quadtone inks from a lot of generations ago. Glossy was but a dream.

For what it's worth, varnish over piezo produced the most amazing looking prints I've ever seen in any medium, but I just couldn't get the varnish to go on consistently without too much trouble. Oil based varnish was easy but toxic, and I don't have a spray booth. Water based via airbrush tended to bubble and give an inconsistent surface. I'm mostly working in color these days

Edited to add: I was using Piezography ICC quadtone inks. Discontinued many years, yes? I suspect that a big part of the problem was the PhotoRag surface itself, but I never worked with other papers ... I liked the look of that paper so much. If I were to do it over again I'd try your newest inks, and possibly one of the baryta paers.

[mdm]

Maybe for a book something simple and inexpensive like Epson Matte HW would work well, The coating on Hahnmule Photorag seems to gunk thinks up from time to time and ruin a print with a speck of coating.