Is there a digital equivalent to a contact print

[paulr]

Sorry. I don't do photoshop. I was under the impression that the major benefit was the ability to edit the image...isn't that photoshop's raison d'entre? Why then do you use photoshop - if not to edit the digitized image?

Photoshop can do anything to an image. Just like a darkroom ...

A darkroom lets you composite images, add people and objects that aren't in the negative, remove ones that are. It allows you to radically alter tones or colors, selectively lighten or darken, sharpen or blur. Crop. Distort. Create strange, strange effects.

Photographers have been doing all these things in traditional darkrooms with traditional materials since the middle of the nineteenth century. It just happens that most photographers choose to use the darkroom in less assertive ways.

Photoshop lets do everything a darkroom does, but with greater ease and precision. This is true for all the radical maniupulations of pictures (which may or may not interest you) and for the more conventional ones, like controlling the tonal curve, burning and dodging, removing dust spots, etc. etc...

Personally, I'm not interested in using photoshop for "editing," if by that you mean substantively manipulating the content of an image. I use it the way I used my darkroom: to control colors and tones so I can make the best prints I can from my negatives. It's an amazing tool for this.

[sanking]

Bob,

Here is the link to Piezography Online Printing.

I highly recommend my Type 5 paper. I think its the best non-OBA Baryta paper on the market. Smoothest most silver-fibre-paper-type-air-dried-gloss effect. I'm sole importer in USA so you won't have seen this from any of the other companies or the OEMs.

Jon

Has Cone Editions made any resolution tests with the Piezography K7 inks on overhead transparency materials? If so, please point me to the test.

Or indeed, do the K7 inks dry well on transparency materials like Pictorico clear OHP?

Sandy King

[Nathan Potter]

Yes, Sandy has touched on a question that I have, me being a digital duffer but trying to learn. I assume that the K7 inks have a set droplet size and it is the complex dithering that gives tonal depth and separation with the range of multi density inks. What is the droplet size and the highest resolution target that can be printed with a 3800 when the digital data is optimized for high contrast and highest resolution?

I find that as Paul says back a ways, this discussion is very qualitative about image quality and that MTF kind of data at the inkjet print level would be more useful.

As an example I'm fiddling with a new V750 Epson scanner and a high resolution glass plate with line pairs down to 1 um. It's a kind of learning experience for me. At best scan the raw data (in pixel form) confirms at least 2400 DPI capability. Fooling with the data in Photoshop using levels, contrast, sharpening etc. I can replicate lines down to 4 um about perfectly. Well that's 6350 SPI! Of course I have sacrificed and distorted the tonal range (had there been a long tonal range on the original plate) so that using Photoshop at such settings would be useless for a fine continuous tone print. BTW I've come to the conclusion that sine wave resolution plates would be very useful for examining inkjet prints microscopically. These plates are resolution line pairs but the transition from clear to opaque is graded in density (follows the Dmax sin omega L function).

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[joncone@cone-editions.com]

Has Cone Editions made any resolution tests with the Piezography K7 inks on overhead transparency materials? If so, please point me to the test.

Or indeed, do the K7 inks dry well on transparency materials like Pictorico clear OHP?

Sandy King

Sandy,

I make two ink sets that work well on Pictorico and other films and these are the two glossy Piezography inking systems: Selenium K7 and WarmNeutral K7. Both have seven shades of ink but both need to be used with the MPS Black option which is what we call our photo black.

In terms of resolution, we do not believe that silver paper and a digital neg can come close to Piezography K7 system when used with one of our K7 curves as intended through the QTR software system on a high quality inkjet paper.

Cone Editions was involved in a project at RIT which eventually became classified. My only part was not classified and that was making a simple QTR curve for six dilutions of ink on Epson Matte paper that would resolve line pairs. The purpose was to print a target of only a few centimeters that is used for focusing a satellite onto an earth based target that is placed in a controlled environment. Silver paper could not resolve this target whether contact printed, digitally direct printed, or enlarged. While I only instructed on the use and was not given possession of the target, I did see the target printed and it was a series of groups of lines that became so tiny that I can not possibly imagine how a satellite could actually see it - let alone focus on it. But apparently there is at least one up there that can read the date on a penny on a sidewalk. That alone is worrisome from a privacy viewpoint.

We can say that contact printing is the sharpest form of traditional photographic printmaking. But, silver paper still has tonal compression in the shadows and highlights and through its emulsion layer can only resolve so much of what is inherent in the film. In comparison K7 has higher enlargement resolution, sharpness (provided the original scan is high standard), better shadow and highlight detail - and provided that the Sepia K7 ink set is chosen, much greater longevity than say the Epson ABW system (twice as much at this point). Using pure carbon ink like Sepia K7 or K6 or even our four shaded version called PiezoTone CarbonSepia provides a platform for expression that is in many ways superior to silver.

I personally do not see Piezography as the beginning of digital printing, but rather the last stop in traditional photographic printmaking. Your next stop will be out of my control...Epson, Canon and HP will all abandon paper eventually instead for output on display screens. Our immediate future will see much less paper - and eventually the market to sustain high quality inkjet will be undermined as a result of a greater number of users abandoning printing for display.

If you wish to make digital negatives, it will not be for superiority over Piezography K7 output - it should be for purely ethical, subjective, or aesthetic values - or simply because you can not yet abandon silver paper. Some of our clients make digital negatives but could not face the "music" if they did not make silver prints. In some ways, I was slow to conventional inkjet only developing and releasing my own color inks just in 2007. My mono inks have been around since the earl 1990s. So I know what it is to hold on...

Jon Cone
Piezography

[antinapple]

Scan at 300 dpi, 360 dpi, 600.720 1200/1440 0r 2400/2880.........

Do I need to bypass the print driver with a rip or other dedicated printing app?

I have a Cezanne, is there an optimal approach to get the illusive

[Peter De Smidt]

Jon,

I think what Sandy was asking is whether using one of your inks with QTR would make better digital negatives than using the OEM inks with QTR, as the latter combo can lead to some grittiness in the negative produced.

[Peter De Smidt]

Scan at 300 dpi, 360 dpi, 600.720 1200/1440 0r 2400/2880.........

Do I need to bypass the print driver with a rip or other dedicated printing app?

I have a Cezanne, is there an optimal approach to get the illusive

Scanning at the max optical resolution will lead to the best quality. With your Cezanne, that'll vary with negative size. There are some threads that deal with this.

[Henry Ambrose]

paulr,

I've more than "fooled with it" and I have yet to see a contact size digital print that outdoes a real contact print. I do think that making 4x5 FOOT print it's pretty easy to outdo wet prints with an inkjet. 8x10 contact vs. 8x10 inkjet- no. Have you?

[joncone@cone-editions.com]

Sorry to answer so late...

Yes of course it can - because the dithering that is required by Epson contributes to its ability to render less smooth tones. It does not have enough light shades to hide all the artifacts produced.

So seven shades of Piezography black ink is always better for smooth contone than three shades of OEM black (and sill so when the three shades are used with additional color inks.) We can actually image information that the Epson dither leaves as paper white between the tiny inkjet dither dots of inks. In Piezography K7, there is no space between dots; they're adjacent always.

Best regards,

Jon Cone
http://www.piezography.com

Jon,

I think what Sandy was asking is whether using one of your inks with QTR would make better digital negatives than using the OEM inks with QTR, as the latter combo can lead to some grittiness in the negative produced.

[Ben Syverson]

Hahaha, "digital contact print." Of course not.