new digital neg system from cone

[andy]

have you all seen this?

http://piezodn.inkjetmall.com/

"PiezoDN is a set of tools and QuadtoneRIP curves for printing and calibrating high-quality negatives using Piezography ink. PiezoDN is also a set of quality standards and ideas for revolutionizing both darkroom printing and digital printing as a whole."

[Taija71A]

Andy...

Thank-you, for posting this information about 'PiezoDN'. Greatly appreciated!
Regards, -Tim.

[DennisD]

Sounds great ! And very interesting. However, no indication of the cost.

Clearly, a "work in progress" with kinks to be ironed out along the way.
Important to note the timeline schedule for certain milestones and functionality with different hardware.

Perhaps best suited for those already familiar with piezography.

I'm not a very good Guinea pig ! So, I'll probably wait till the system is further along and perfected.

I don't know Jon Cone, but I'm impressed by his dedication and many years of research that raised the bar w/r/t high quality inkjet printing.

[neil poulsen]

It may add to darkroom printing, but I don't think that it replaces it.

The test is whether it can convincingly print silver gelatin prints. That would be interesting to see.

[LesleyNowlin]

i'm really looking forward to trying this out!

[Michael Rosenberg]

If you are interested in printing on silver gelatin paper using digital negatives, you should check out my monograph on making digital negatives with QTR and Epson Inks.. It is free, and does not require switching out inks. I have had feed back from a lot of people who have tried this and they report success. The profiles and curves work with a variety of silver gelatin paper.

Mike

[bob carnie]

I would be interested in a ink system that has the same blocking power and sharpness as silver film, I am producing enlarged contact film for silver with very
good results, I use a Durst Lambda with 20 inch and 30 inch Rollie ortho 25 developed in HC110. We are able to make up to 28 inch x 40 inch live area on film.
I also make inkjet negs but have not seen great results to silver gelatin - basically a lot of light bleed through the ink.

We are using Ron Reeders QTR system on a Epson 7800- though great for alternative rag prints , not so great for silver contact.

Michael - could you describe how your system is different to allow better blocking power using ink sets and pictorico?

[sanking]

We are using Ron Reeders QTR system on a Epson 7800- though great for alternative rag prints , not so great for silver contact.

Bob,

Are you still printing digital negatives on the 7800 with the Matte Black ink installed? If so, switching to PK would improve greatly the smoothness of your negatives on any process that uses smooth papers. You would have to create a new profile, of course.

Sandy

[Michael Mutmansky]

Bob,

Are you still printing digital negatives on the 7800 with the Matte Black ink installed? If so, switching to PK would improve greatly the smoothness of your negatives on any process that uses smooth papers. You would have to create a new profile, of course.

Sandy

Yes, I'm curious about this too because I can get densities in the 3.5 or higher range using stock Epson PK ink on film. That's way too high for SG printing, so if I were looking to print SG, I'd be looking are developing a 'shades of gray' approach that meets the density requirements you want. In the case of SG, it may be possible to use a 7-ink printer and set the maximum somewhat higher for other processes (gum and pt/pd), and then only use the lower density inks for SG. That would help avoid gritty highlights associated with high density black ink that is too high at the individual ink droplet level.

I recently put together an all-black inkset for my old 4800 with help from Sandy, but I took a slightly different approach than he did because I was focusing on pt/pd and he focused on carbon.

Anyway, the point is that I used all 7 inks to put it together, but I'll bet that a solid negative could be produced using 5 inks for pt/pd and gum, and similarly for SG. What could be done is set the ink densities so that there are a few dedicated to pt/pd and a few for SG, and the rest are used for both. Two of each dedicated, and three used for both produces 5 inks in each system without changing the inks.

Something like this:




#1_________#2_________#3___________#4_______________#5___________#6___________#7______
pt/pd

PK_______.5PK/.5LK______LK_______.66LK/.33LLK________________________LLK

SG

_______________________LK_______.66LK/.33LLK______.66LK/.33LLK_______LLK_______.5LLK/.5base

This will allow you a wide latitude for laying down ink in both density ranges but still have reasonable steps in density so that the highlights aren't gritty, and the shadows have enough ink to not be real spotty as well.

You could use #5 in the pt/pd as well, but it is probably unnecessary, based on my tests and the general low response curve in the shadows for pt/pd. This, in particular, is one place where I made a substantial change from the normal approach that many people have used.

You probably wouldn't want to use #1 at all in the SG, and probably not #2. I don't recall the Dmax that this blend should produce, so I don't know how useful it will be for SG.

An alternate is to do 2 steps between the PK and the LK instead of one, and then just do a single step between LK and LLK. All of this will require some basic testing to determine what appears to be the best approach.


---Michael

[Michael Rosenberg]

Bob,

The negatives with my system look like a silver gelatin negative, with smooth transitions between tones, little to no grain (on the silver gelatin print), and very sharp. Sandy King visited me a couple of years ago and saw the negatives and the resulting prints. He has since adapted part of my method for carbon print negatives. My system builds on Ron Reeders method for alt pritns using QTR. The process is linear, so the higher density of a silver gelatin negative is the densest part of the negative; as you can see from the image of the ink curves they sort of look like a film density plot. My method differs from all other methods as it introduces a linearized curve in the ink descriptions,, rather than trying to impose a linearization on top of all the inks (see insert picture and my monograph). This is clearer when you look at the top part of the image showing the QTR Gui ink settings. Thus, all but one ink overlays each other.

LC and C are not used because silver gelatin paper does not respond to cyan/ink color. Because the inks overlap the ratio of magenta and yellow inks affects local contrast. Overlap of the inks also lays down more ink for blocking light and reducing grain. I use the Epson 4880 and 7880 printers with the Epson inks. One other big difference is the negative media; I found transparency and white film do not give very good results, as I explain in my monograph. Instead I have found that glossy print paper gives excellent results - less grain and very sharp. Not to mention it is much cheaper!

Several people who have tried my system have given me feedback that the two curves and profiles I supplied worked extremely well, and they did not need to change anything.

You can download the monograph from my web site, and if you send me your e-mail I will send you the files (My web host does not allow them to be downloaded from my site).

I would be interested in a ink system that has the same blocking power and sharpness as silver film, I am producing enlarged contact film for silver with very
good results, I use a Durst Lambda with 20 inch and 30 inch Rollie ortho 25 developed in HC110. We are able to make up to 28 inch x 40 inch live area on film.
I also make inkjet negs but have not seen great results to silver gelatin - basically a lot of light bleed through the ink.

We are using Ron Reeders QTR system on a Epson 7800- though great for alternative rag prints , not so great for silver contact.

Michael - could you describe how your system is different to allow better blocking power using ink sets and pictorico?