Piezography: Talk me into/out of it

[sanking]

[QUOTE=Ken Lee;1579542]If we find ourselves disoriented in the woods, we can run around in many directions and eventually go in circles. Or, we can simply climb to the top of the

I totally agree with Ken, the essential skill that you need is use of image editing software, and Photoshop would definitely be my choice.

In terms of making negatives and printing in silver you already have a huge advantage over most people who get involved with some form of hand crafted printing in that you know what a good negative looks like, and you understand how to expose and develop paper.

And I do suggest the use of QTR for your digital negatives. And I highly recommend a new book that was just published on digital negatives with QTR.
https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Negat.../dp/0367862301

Sandy

[Michael R]

Great advice, guys. Thanks for your help.

Incidentally, Sandy, since I know almost nothing of the current state of the art in digital negatives, have we come to a point where they can be made well enough to actually be put into an enlarger (or contact print)? I suppose it might still depend on what kind of density range you need (particularly for alt processes), and of course on the magnification/enlargement factor, but I’m just generally wondering.

Thanks again,
Michael

[sanking]

Great advice, guys. Thanks for your help.

Incidentally, Sandy, since I know almost nothing of the current state of the art in digital negatives, have we come to a point where they can be made well enough to actually be put into an enlarger (or contact print)? I suppose it might still depend on what kind of density range you need (particularly for alt processes), and of course on the magnification/enlargement factor, but I’m just generally wondering.

Thanks again,
Michael

Yes, the technology does exist for making digital negatives that one can use in an enlarger. See website of the Chicago Albumen Works. http://www.albumenworks.com/

Unfortunately, the type of equipment needed is fairly expensive and not many would be able to afford and/or maintain it. Inkjet Printer technology provides for a maximum resolution of about 720 ppi, or 14 lpm. That would be considered inadequate for enlarging.

In any event, working with contact printing of silver can be done quite easily with a minimum of equipment, and if digital you have all the needed image manipulations already built into the image file. Slower papers, say silver chloride type, are probably desirable in contact printing.

Sandy

[Michael R]

Thanks. Contact printing could eventually be interesting but that's way down the line. I think the most interesting possibility for me would be burn/dodge masks for enlarging. Depending on the type of mask, sharp or not, spacing and image content there could be some leeway on resolution, but again I'm getting way ahead of myself...

Thanks for the help.
Michael

[h2oman]

OK, so the results are in, at least partially. Long post – if you are not really interested in Piezography, I wouldn’t read it!

I went ahead and ordered a set of Piezography K7 inks, neutral tone, for an Epson 3800. I had several expectations:

1. I’d have trouble in some way getting the ink carts set up and figuring out how to print with QTR.

2. The results I got, if I was able to print, were no better, or even worse, than what I had gotten with Epson ABW.

3. Based on some things I read online, I thought that an image without large areas of smooth tonal gradients wouldn’t benefit from Piezo printing. I also thought any benefits would only appear on larger prints, and I planned to do all my testing on 8.5x11.

First, filling the carts and installing them: It all went smoothly until I went to load the carts in the machine. They would not insert completely. I sent an e-mail to the help at Inkjet Mall Thursday night, but I think everyone was snowed in at home on Friday – no response. I asked Ken and he had no ideas. I then managed to figure out what I thought the problem was and, of course, when I went back and read the online directions again there was something very well noted that I had failed to do. Problem solved.

I ran three power cleaning cycles – 3 to 4 is recommended. I have been using Arista II Fine Art Natural Cotton matte paper (the Freestyle Photographic “generic” matte) for all of my printing over the last 4 or 5 years, and used primarily Epson Ultra Pemium Presentation matte paper before that. The Arista is a touch warmer, two-sided, less expensive, and gave results I liked for my primarily color printing recently. So I planned to use that paper with the Piezo inkset, but ordered a pack of Epson Hot Press Natural to have a slightly warmer paper to try as well. It was reviewed favorably at the Piezography website. I downloaded into QTR every profile for smooth matte papers that Piezography has for the neutral ink set. One of them was for the Epson Ultra Premium, and that is the suggested profile for the Arista paper if one doesn’t have a custom profile for that paper.

For some reason, my printer just didn’t want to do sheet feed with QTR, so I ended up feeding manually from the rear, which I don’t mind doing. The first attempt to print resulted in ¾ of an image. More failure! But I tried again, and got a full image. Both had a little yellow in the highlights, so I ran another power cleaning cycle. I had chosen the image below because it had extensive darker grays and near whites.



The results with Piezo were OK, but not spectacular. The prints felt a little bland. I printed the image two more times, once with the profile for Canson Photo Rag and once with the profile for Jon Cone Type 2. I could really make out very little difference between the prints from the three different profiles, but had just a slight preference for the print from the Epson Ultra Premium profile. To be expected! I then printed using Epson ABW (I have two printers) for comparison. The result had a bit more “punch,” for lack of a better term, mostly in all the detail in the windows. But I could also see that the Piezo handled the dark tones on the underside of the ornate railing better.

I then made a Piezo print with the Epson Hot Press Natural paper and the Piezo profile for that paper. The result on all the darker tones at the bottom and top of the image were markedly smoother. I’ve been happy printing color on the Arista paper, but it was immediately clear that it just wouldn’t do for B&W any more! I made an Epson ABW print on the Epson Hot Press Natural, and it compared to the Piezo print in the same way as with the Arista paper – “punchier” in the window area, but not good with the darker areas. So the question now was “Could I alter the processing of the image a bit to get some punchiness with Piezo, but also retain the superb handling of the darker tones?”

I took the Piezo Epson Hot Press image over to my computer and “calibrated” my monitor to the print (sort of primitive and backward!) by fiddling with the brightness and contrast until the image on the screen was a good match for the print. I then used Lightroom to take the black point down a tiny bit and add a little clarity (midtone contrast). I started a print, then began re-comparing the Piezo and Epson ABW while it was printing. I liked the “punch” of the ABW print, but in all the detail of the windows it was also a little bit harsh too, leading me to think I was making a mistake with the additional image adjustment. I was wrong – the new Piezo print came out great! Better rendering of the window areas with wonderful handling of the dark areas.

So what now? I think I’m glad I made the change, but I’ll have to print more images, and at larger sizes, to be certain it was worth it. I’ll order more Hot Press Natural in larger sizes, and some Hot Press Bright as well, for images where I want less warmth. By the way, the inks do appear quite neutral to my eye, which is what I wanted. Now I just need to figure out my QTR paper feed problem when trying to sheet feed...

[Michael R]

Thanks for posting your initial thoughts.

I guess my technical takeaway is that one must really recalibrate the workflow - including editing. With any set of materials, with experience we develop a general way of working that intuitively takes the various transitions from step to step into account. In other words, our technique develops to work around the idiosyncrasies and limitations of each step in the workflow. Same deal in the darkroom. With Piezography profiles and ink sets, we are more or less removing one of those non linear transitions we have grown accustomed to working around, so it makes sense to me we would need to change the way we edit to some degree, and move certain “guide posts” such as black point etc.

All this to say basically it takes some workflow adjustment in order to realize the maximum potential gain.

I’m somewhat encouraged by your findings so far.

Michael

[Ken Lee]

I took the Piezo Epson Hot Press image over to my computer and “calibrated” my monitor to the print (sort of primitive and backward!) by fiddling with the brightness and contrast until the image on the screen was a good match for the print.

It's important to turn down the monitor to paper brightness before making adjustments for printing. Otherwise we waste paper and ink. Paper brightness depends not only on the paper, but the level of illumination in the room, yet another dreaded... variable.

You might find this short article helpful: My Monitor is Too Bright

When printing, I previously used my EIZO monitor with a monitor profile for 80 cd/m2, but you've inspired me to experiment with lower values. Typical home interiors are dimmer than standard office illumination.

[h2oman]

I really didn't feel that my prints were any lighter or darker than I expected, which might be partially explained by the fact that I'm using a CRT monitor. What was interesting was that the Piezo prints didn't seem to have quite as much contrast as the ABW prints. I found the contrast pleasing in the ABW, but the handling of tonal gradients better with Piezo. My thought was that I first needed to get my monitor to show the same lesser contrast that the Piezo prints had. But it turned out I had to fiddle with BOTH the contrast and brightness to obtain a decent match.

This morning I got up and looked at all the prints I had made, and saw that all the Piezo prints were yellow in the light tones, even after what I think was four power cleaning cycles. I figured that if I kept running power cleanings I was using up ink, so I digitally created an image that was just solid very light gray, thinking I'd just print out all the yellow. I printed that 3 or four times and got yellow on all of them. I thought I'd start getting less and less yellow. Ran one more power cleaning and printed the solid image again - yellow gone!

[roscoetuff-Skip Mersereau]

H2oman: Your experience is somewhat consistent with mine... in the WYSIWIG way. It works. It's expensive however to keep running paper and ink and adjusting that way. I think what Ken is recommending is a way to refine the process at the starting point rather than the end point. This, too, is not without cost: Good EIZO monitors seem to be $1,000 at the low end... which seems a tad on the high end for "discovery" and more in the realms of "serious professional gear" (which would then put it at the low end). Very few articles and books are out there on digital printing. Luminous Landscape's Mark Segal and Dan Wells are a few of those who seem to have a dedicated interest in these things. In short, I don't think there's a lot of guidance. Piezography itself may be less significant than the dedication of Jon Cone and especially Walker Blackwell constitute a force. There are others. But there's something to be said for these folks that's not to be dismissed lightly. FWIW, I wish they'd follow the example of the Eastman folks and run video workshops (zoom, teams, etc) as I think their reach could be much wider. Richard Boutwell does this, and I think Ken is talking about it (on his site). Plenty of dedicated folks come to this as an avocation rather than a living (much as we might wish otherwise), and time is scarce (it's scarce for the fulltimers, too, I'm sure).

But FWIW, this discussion is finally pushing me off my duff to start cleaning out my printer heads. Cleaned up just about everything else since the move and now its time to get back to printing! Winter is a great time for inside work!

[JMO]

Michael R, Montreal is can't be that far from East Topsham, Vermont, where Cone Edition Press is located; and where they offer their seminars to help people learn various aspects of using their technology. When this COVID saga is over you might consider investing in one or more of their workshops. I have, but their basic orientation to using QTR and the workflow says you need to bring your own computer (laptop presumably), which I don't have and don't want to invest in (I prefer desktop). So I'll need to talk to Walker or someone there to see if it could make sense to attend and just take lots of detailed notes (which I'm generally very good at).