Piezography Printing

[Jay W]

BTW, Cone is not the only game in town. I believe MIS B&W inks are quite a bit more popular. I've been using the UT2 inks (refillable cartridges) in a 1280 and EMM and Ham 308 paper. Very nice stuff. I've also bought their bulk color inks for another 1280, but haven't loaded them up yet (I do quite a bit less color).

http://www.inksupply.com/ut2-1280.cfm

Paul Roark has made curves for a number of papers and B&W inks, and the workflow is fairly straightforward. There's quite a bit of information on the MIS site and the Yahoo site previously mentioned.

Jay

[Bruce Watson]

Has anyone on here converted a printer to the Piezography inks?

I'd be very interested to hear from people who've successfully done this with a printer they own/operate.

I've got an Epson 7600 running the selenium PiezoTones. I'm driving it with the Ergosoft's Studioprint RIP. It was actually relatively painless to setup. Print quality is outstanding.

[Ted Harris]

Let me expand on Bruce's post. IMO you can get even better results using one of the high end RIPs (Studioprint, ColorBurst, ImagePrint) than you will from special inksets. Of course, the learning curve is steep here too and you will need to be running one of the wide format printers for solid repeatable results.

[Ken Lee]

Will they send you samples by mail ?

I got an Epson 2400 after getting a sample or two from InkjetArts.com I'm already delighted with the Epson, what can be done using the standard Epson inks.

I have a hard time visualizing how anything could surpass it, but I would love to.

[paulr]

I have a hard time visualizing how anything could surpass it, but I would love to.

A nice thing with Cone's inks is that you can print with pure carbon pigments. I don't think that's the case with epson (or with anyone else for that matter).

[Jay W]

"A nice thing with Cone's inks is that you can print with pure carbon pigments. I don't think that's the case with epson (or with anyone else for that matter)."

MIS uses carbon pigments. Again, if you're considering Cone, also take a look at MIS.

Jay

[paulr]

"A nice thing with Cone's inks is that you can print with pure carbon pigments. I don't think that's the case with epson (or with anyone else for that matter)."

MIS uses carbon pigments. Again, if you're considering Cone, also take a look at MIS.

Jay

From the MIS site:

"The UT inks are predominantly carbon and 100% pigment."

In other words, not 100% carbon pigment. Some unknown percentage of something else.

I like knowing what the pigment is, and knowing that it's completely innert. I also get the impression that Cone is just way out ahead of everyone else with the ink and profile technology. MIS seems to have improved a lot in the last few years, but they're chasing a moving target.

[Walter Foscari]

For a good discussion of the Cone vs MIS debate check out this at the yahoo forum:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/D.../message/79196

Personally I use MIS and I'm more than happy with the results.

[jim kitchen]

According to MIS, only the warm ink set contains pure carbon pigments, where their medium warm, neutral and cool inks contain coloured pigmented inks to control the tonality of the image. I recently had a conversation with Paul Roark, where Paul reiterated this comment indicating that the MIS inks do not contain dyes, but they do contain coloured pigmented inks. Paul did not dismiss the notion where MIS might plan to include a pure carbon ink set eventually to create a neutral tone, but for the moment Paul indicated that he tries to print his own artwork with the most lightfast product MIS currently makes, and that happens to be their warm tone ink set.

Jon Cone's inks are pure carbon pigment where the carbon particles are suspended in a possible proprietary solution.

Epson ink sets contain coloured pigmented ink, where the K3 ink set contains three different carbon particles presently, and where Epson states their solution to longevity is to coat a pure coloured particle, known as a pigmented particle, with a proprietary chemical process that protects the colourant material. The colourant material does dissipate with time, and because the colourant material is a solid colour particle, any change to the colour should not exist in the image, therefore introducing some form of longevity.

I chose Jon Cone's ink set because I do not like metamerism and, or gloss differential within an image, and although the latest ink set from Epson generates a great tonal range from pure black to paper white while using an excellent RIP, signs of metamerism, and gloss differential still exist in the final image. I know other coating agents exist to reduce these effects, but I am very reluctant to include this incremental procedure because this process introduces increased and partially uncontrollable contrast, and unfortunately introduces another questionable variable into the archival conservation equation.

Lastly, and I apologize for the length of this thread and redirecting this thread, but gallery owners and their directors are becoming keenly aware and totally enriched about the changing direction in photographic fine art, where the image making process is migrating to a digital environment from the traditional darkroom environment. The question about longevity rises to the surface more often than it should, and for some unknown reason digital photographic fine art seems to be a target of the longevity question, where other forms of art simply dismiss the longevity shroud of dust and move forward. Metamerism and gloss differential seem to be the culprits, where the presence of this digital plague can quickly identify a digital image in a heart beat, and because of this unkempt appearance, questions are raised about the longevity of an image by knowledgeable patrons and gallery owners alike. To summarily dismiss their concerns would be irresponsible, and to have an image returned to a gallery because of quality failure, will attach its presence to your inherent ability as an artist, quicker than a rock will sink in water.

To eliminate this continuous barrage of archival questions, and to eliminate blindly stated or quoted Wilhelm statistics while defending the quality of a digital image, I decided that I would use Jon Cone's pure carbon ink set as my medium, and because the ink is pure carbon based pigment printed on museum quality cotton rag paper, this identifiable quality quells any archival issues immediately. I feel very comfortable displaying my finished images within a gallery, and I truly love the wondrous and continuous tonality; the image portrays. I believe technology will change the way we think and portray photographic fine art; eventually, and where the creative knowledge obtained in a traditional fine art darkroom might dissipate into a long forgotten memory a century from now, but for the moment I am willing to embrace the change, and again I will embrace the change as long as the change does not produce digital garbage.

I apologize again for the length of my comments...

jim k

[Kirk Gittings]

Jim, interesting comments. Ironically I have no trouble selling ink prints through and to museums (with no questions at all) yet am hounded by questions about archivabilty at commercial art galleries.