Piezography

[paulr]

Has anyone made digital prints with quadtone piezography? I've heard great things about it, and am thinking it might be the perfect medium for producing small edition handmade books.

[windpointphoto]

I've had many problems with the ink clogging up my Epson 1280. Not so many problems on the Epson 3000. The customer support is not very good. The inks are expensive. All that being said when it works it looks great. IMO it's apples and oranges when compared to traditional prints. There is the advantage of not needing a darkroom but you can't get a glossy print. Again, IMO the traditional prints look better.

[Bruce Watson]

I use PiezoTones for my fine art work. It's the best B&W inkjet solution I've seen yet, IMHO. I'm a happy camper, especially with the shadow detail, highlight detail, and contrast control I'm able to get. I don't miss the darkroom much at all.

I use an Epson 7600 and never have had that much of a problem with clogs. For that matter, the worst clog I've had on this machine was from the UltraChromes that shipped with it. Had to get a service tech. on site to fix that one.

Here's the deal. Inkjet prints aren't wannabe darkroom prints. Inkjet is a separate media, and it looks like a separate media. Just like silver gelatin, platinum, gum bichromate, carbon, dye transfer, salt, albumen......

The problem you'll have using inkjet with pigment inks for your project is that pigment inks sit on the surface of the paper. The surface is therefore fragile. You'll want to laminate the print in some way, either with hot or cold lamination, for with a fixative spray (think lacquers). This will of course add time and expense.

OTOH, ink jet can print on papers that are made for this purpose, where traditional photography can not. With traditional photography, you'd have to make the prints, them tip them in (glue them to the book page). It's a lot of fun trying to get the print positioned just right - takes forever until you develop the knack.

I haven't seen a lot of handmade books done with inkjet. Of the few I have seen, they looked very nice. Matte paper, matte lacquer, single sided printing, with thin interleave sheets between the pages (don't know why - the lacquer will protect the image just fine without interleaves).

If you decide to go this way, check out InkJetMall's latest offering, the iQuad system. It looks as if it's a custom profile for your printer. This seems to be solving Cone's attempt to make generic profiles for the "consumer grade" printers whose sample-to-sample variability caused such problems for his ICC profiles. Clearly, YMMV, but it looks like Cone is on the right track again.

[paulr]

Thanks, Hogarth. That's all extremely helpful. I was actually wondering about varnishes or laquers.

Do you know if it's possible to print on both sides of any of the fine art papers? I can see how there could be issues if the papers are different on one side, or if running through the printer would damage a dry print, or if none of the papers are opaque enough. but i would love to be able to design the book with facing pages, in order to allow certain kinds of pairings of images.

[tim atherton]

I made a small hand made book in this way (happened to be colour) with work from a recent project - 5x7 just hand sewn "japanese" style - as a sort of promo piece (turned out to be one of the better pieces I've ever done - generated a lot of interest, several assignments, insitituional pritn sales etc).

I happened to use some pre-cut 5x7 sheets of a double sided watercolour type paper that isn't made any more. There are at least a couple of others out there - Moab Entrada (still has some problems with "flaking" though), Hahemueller Photo Rag comes in a double sided version - a real favourite for peizo type B&W printing, Epson PermierArt Scrapbook is also quite nice (only comes in letter and 12"x12") - and Epson Ultrasmooth when it comes in sheets should be nice to. I think also some of the Hawk Mountain rag/watercolour papers are double sided.

A lot depends also on the weight of the paper and how it's fibres lie in terms of how well it works for this kind of handmade book. Photo Rag may well be a good choice.

[David F. Stein]

Good comments by all above. Inkjet is a distinct medium. I wouldn't overlook "regular" printmaking papers like Somerset Velvet (non-coated) and I like Johannot quite a bit, I use it for Black Only printing with the MIS Associates black pigment ink (the latest iteration being called Eboni). Inkjetart has some nice house brands of coated papers, including their Epson Enhanced Matte substitute. Interestingly, the Epson Scrapbook mentioned above by Tim is a 100 percent cotton, lignen free paper I believe.

[David F. Stein]

PS. I haven't bought any of the turnkey Quad printing systems. My best results have been with the original Chris Brandin quadtone curves done for MIS Associates. (If that fellow had been interested, I think he could have captured best-of-market product. Paul Roarke has followed in his foot steps.) And the QuadRIP available for Mac OS X (based on Gimp Print) is also excellent-it works right off the Epson 2200 standard Ultrachrome set. I can switch back and forth between Quad with Variable Warm and Cool and Full Color without changing inks.

[Bruce Watson]

Paul,

You can certainly print on both sides. There are several papers that are coated on both sides. Hahnemuhle certainly makes a double sided Photo Rag, as Tim indicates.

As to coatings, you might want to look around in the archives of the yahoo group EpsonWideFormat. In particular, this post:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EpsonWideFormat/message/48337

Many people are looking to solve this problem. Some coatings work better than others. At least the above referenced list gives you a pretty up-to-date listing of the suppliers.

[ismet gurer]

Lensworthy,

Chris Brandin curves are for 4 or 6 color printers, how can you use them at a 7 color printer like Epson 2200. I have a CFS of MIS an using UT7 inks of MIS with Paul Roark's curves but I am not stisfied because I cannot get rich midtones.

İsmet