Piezography: Talk me into/out of it

[Ken Lee]

Ken, I’m wondering why you’d be looking into HP etc. versus sticking with Piezography (besides flexibility perhaps).

I'm always looking for something potentially easier, cheaper, better, etc.

While Piezography is very very good, it requires you to dedicate an Epson-only printer, use their inks, cartridges, drivers, etc. Epson wants revenue from Epson inks and with every new generation they've make it harder to use alternatives. A simpler solution that would work with any printer would be far more popular.

If all printers did B&W and Color equally, perfectly and conveniently with truly archival permanence at an affordable price-point, there would be little need for services like Aardenburg or vendors like Piezography or Richard Boutwell or RIP providers. We could just press some buttons and concentrate on aesthetics.

With prints, as with so many things, we don't often notice a glaring issue until we place two of them side-by-side and compare. Some of us went to Large Format for that reason: given a choice, we preferred the better result. Over 50 years ago I made an 8x10 print from a 4x5 Speed Graphic and compared it to one from a 35mm camera, and that was that.

[roscoetuff-Skip Mersereau]

Ken is right as rain on this subject.

FWIW, the Lula forum has a number of posts on these HP printers. More on the Z9 replacement at this point, but quite a number on the Z3100 and Z3200. Worth a look. Guess more folks have gone to these HP Z's than I imagined. And yes, I live under a rock.

As someone who's software approach has taken me outside the mainstream from time to time, I wonder about HP's commitment to fine art printing. Cone and his group together with Roy Harrington have a relatively thin reed in Piezo... and that is a risk. But maybe less than suspected with the Chinese art community having made a big commitment to these inks and processes. Imageprint software and similar are available for Epson and Canon... but I don't see a lot of 3rd party support for HP.... though my look at it is very percursory.

I just sense that there are more folks trying to wring the best out of Canon and Epson printers... and more specifically the latter. Over the next few weeks as my schedule opens up, I expect to resurrect my P800 desktop... one way or the other. I'm fine with 16X 20 prints as by "BIG", and think I'd probably outshop anything bigger. Yes, I've not created any Clyde Butcher "walk into it" photos... but that's a thought. What I have done is used Imageprint for a number of years and been pretty happy with it. My photos ain't much, but still... when you work it, you can get something out of that combo that makes you very pleased, and I've had very kind comments from other photographers on my printing "skills" (LOL... it's in the software, the hardware and the persistence to keep at it when lots of folks would give up... 'cause mine require that).

I'm not sure there is any such thing as easy. Ever. If you want "better", it's almost always going to come with more work. But fairly I may misunderstand and the objective is to define a workflow that get's "set" and then followed, becomes the proverbial "riding a bicycle". The problem with hybrid (and 100% digital for that matter) is that the workflow is forever changed as the software gets "upgraded". Even if it's not the photography post or RIP software, it's the operating system. Mac may be better at this than Windows, but Windows releases, maintenance and driver updates - all of which are mandatory - continually mess up the tie between the printer and software. Reconnecting to the printer definition ...the IP address... is a bother. Imageprint 10 was notoriously bad at this and frankly QTR not much better.

So easy? LOL.

I bought a 2nd printer - Epson P600 - to learn Piezography because Cone's folks suggested you can't go back and forth between color and B&W on the same printer, and at the time, the jailbreak solution for the P800 wasn't "fixed", and the hardware solution was $300 and good only for a number of runs. Now that they have a solution, my own decision lies between: 1) upgrade Imageprint to a newer version "BLACK" with whatever "deal" ColorByte offers, 2) Convert the P800 to Piezo, or 3) Punt and run with what I got and figure it out later with the "next printer". P600 is good for prints at 12-inches, but most of the print skills I've learned have been from using larger sheets. P600 is more like putting your toe in a pool to judge whether or not to dive all the way in.

[Ken Lee]

I bought a 2nd printer - Epson P600 - to learn Piezography because Cone's folks suggested you can't go back and forth between color and B&W on the same printer, and at the time, the jailbreak solution for the P800 wasn't "fixed", and the hardware solution was $300 and good only for a number of runs. Now that they have a solution, my own decision lies between: 1) upgrade Imageprint to a newer version "BLACK" with whatever "deal" ColorByte offers, 2) Convert the P800 to Piezo, or 3) Punt and run with what I got and figure it out later with the "next printer". P600 is good for prints at 12-inches, but most of the print skills I've learned have been from using larger sheets. P600 is more like putting your toe in a pool to judge whether or not to dive all the way in.

Before you commit to anything, you can pay Piezography to make you a sample print on one of their P800's. Make the same print yourself with ImagePrint and compare. You will have your answer, one way or another. Can you install a trial version of their new Black version and evaluate it before purchase ? If so, just print and compare the same image.

This isn't the greatest test image in the world, but here's one of mine. It has a 50-step bulls-eye, a large gradient from 0 to 100, some blurry flowers and a portrait with (caucasian) skin tones. It is a TIF file in 16-bit Adobe Gray Gamma 2.2 color space.

The gradient should print with no banding. You should be able to discern all 50 steps from their neighbors. The skin and flowers should look, dare we say... analog

[roscoetuff-Skip Mersereau]

Ken... amazing. Thank you. I'll give it a whirl. I think you'll be way past this by the time I get to it.... holidays, work, a new grand baby, etc.... the "shopping and looking stuff up" is easy. Actual doing? MUCH harder.

[sanking]

I would not want to try to talk anyone out of using any method of making photographs.

My path was somewhat similar to in that of Ken in that I originally started with monochrome printing with an Epson 2200 with the canned curves. I remember them as 16-bit however, but perhaps my mind plays tricks with time.

But my main goal was always to use my inkjet printers to make digital negatives, and that is when I started to experiment with Piezography K7 inks with an Epson 7600 printer. That ink set did not work at all for me in terms of digital negatives, but I did love the large selenium toned monochrome prints I was able to make on matte surface papers. Unfortunately that printer died before I was able to create a good digital negative, and after several miserable experiences with Epson 3800 and 3880 printers I eventually decided to purchase and Epson 7880 and mix various combinations of the Epson PK, LK and LLK to create a custom inkset for digital negatives. Took a fair amount of work but I eventually learned that I could also create profiles for making very nice inkjet prints with the same custom inkjet. I was always a bit hesitant about using 3rd party inks other than the ones from Inkjet Mall, which have never caused clogging for me in the 7880.

Perhaps one of the reasons I had better success than some in creating my own profiles/curves with QTR is in the choice of spectrophotometer and software. Learning to use the iOne and IOne 2 devices and iProfiler software took some time, but now that I have been able to make custom inksets I am able to create a linearized profile for slight ink tonal variations and paper in 5-10 minutes from step wedges of 51 steps. My favorite papers these days for inkjet monochrome prints is baryta coated rag.




Sandy

[h2oman]

Everyone but Sandy can ignore this.

My favorite papers these days for inkjet monochrome prints is baryta coated rag.

[SergeyT]

...
With prints, as with so many things, we don't often notice a glaring issue until we place two of them side-by-side and compare. Some of us went to Large Format for that reason: given a choice, we preferred the better result. Over 50 years ago I made an 8x10 print from a 4x5 Speed Graphic and compared it to one from a 35mm camera, and that was that.

If we are speaking of 8x10 prints, then my experience is somewhat the opposite. In 8x10 some of my Color prints from 35mm look nicer than the ones from a 4x5, as viewed side by side. At that size the resolution difference becomes non-existent but the rendering and colorfulness of images from 35mm CY lenses most of the time beats the rendering and colorfulness achieved by Nikon lenses that I use on 4x5. No doubt that the absolute amount of details in equally large scans from 35mm and 4x5 are not comparable, nevertheless in prints up to a certain size, the 35mm may have an advantage. And as soon as we start counting the missing opportunities with 4x5 vs 35mm the gap narrows even more.

[Ken Lee]

FWIW, the Lula forum has a number of posts on these HP printers. More on the Z9 replacement at this point, but quite a number on the Z3100 and Z3200. Worth a look. Guess more folks have gone to these HP Z's than I imagined. And yes, I live under a rock.
.

Thanks for the helpful reference to that forum, where mainly after-the-honeymoon issues are discussed, like acquiring and maintaining obsolete OS versions and workstations to keep the machines running - and profiling issues when using newer OS and drivers - and failing hardware components. Soon after new printers hit the market for their currently designated OS and drivers, support and materials disappear via planned obsolescense. We're eventually obliged to upgrade. That's the business model, apparently.

I was wrongly hoping that once we reach a substantial price point, these issues of maintenance and upgrade would be resolved for us: we'd cross a threshold and enter a heavenly realm where the problems are all solved. Instead, the further up we go, the more the problems appear. Perhaps one of the core value propositions of Piezography is that they actually do the testing and trouble-shooting for us, shield us from churn and provide us with tested gear that works together.

[jp]

BTW, Ken has made some awesome piezography prints. I've been to one of his exhibits and have a print of my own. He's quite skilled in the subject and you are wise to be considering his advice on the topic.

[Carol C]

This is an interesting conversation for me. referring to the 8x10 v 35 mm images reminded me of when I was starting out and couldn't afford a 4x5. I wanted to make large B&W images, so I shot 35mm Kodak Techpan film. It was the best B&W film ever in my opinion. You could enlarge it and get the clarity and detail like a 4x5 neg.The quality of shadows, highlights and tonality of the finished image was amazing. To this day I have not seen anything that compares to its high quality.