Piezography K7/MPS and IJC/OPM?

[Eirik Berger]

First of all, I have searched the forum to read about experiences with the K7-ink. But I have a few questions for the experienced users of this system.

I have printed a lot of BW with older Epson printers (7500 among others) and I use MIS Ultratone ink and the Bowhaus IJC/OPM software. I enjoyed building up my own profiles, define total ink limit, linearize with either a densitometer or a spectrophotometer and frankly experiment to figure out how it works. And the prints were good. I was amazed how good prints I could make from such an old printer as the 7500.

Later I tried to use QTR with Epson K3-ink on newer printers, but a year ago I was forced to take a break from it all. But I remember that printing BW with color ink didn´t make my stomach "tickle". I felt that too much of the work was left to the printer driver. I missed messing around with printing patches with monochrome ink and making the proper measurements to achieve great profiles and printing results.

Getting to the point soon. So now I have ordered the Piezography Selenium K7/MPS set-up for the Epson 3800. It comes with 9 cartridges and allow the user to have all 6 shades of grey, a glossy black, a matte black and Gloss Optimizer (GO) in the printer at the same time. The printmaker can print matte and glossy prints without changing cartridges and flushing the system between prints. I am looking forward to install it.

Everybody speaks warmly about the QTR software for Piezography inks, but I am not comfortable with having to order a $100 custom profile every time a client wants a special paper, or when I find out that I will try new papers.

So I am considering using IJC/OPM again, it will give me full control over the ink distribution for so many papers I want and specially it will give me easy control over the layout of GO. Has anyone of you used the IJC/OPM software with the K7/MPS ink? I would like to get in touch with you to discuss a few things and maybe exchange experiences. I have used it extensively with other inks, but not K7.

I have of course lost my login-information at the Bowhaus website (www.bowhaus.com), to download the software. I e-mailed them but have not received any answer yet. And when I click on the link at the top left on the website ("True Black and White and IJC/OPM") I get to a page only describing the "True Black and White"-software designed for large format Canon printers. Have they stopped selling/developing the IJC/OPM-software?

[Sergei Antonov]

What prevents you from preparing profiles for K7 in QTR, like you did it before? If you print through QTR, all you need is simple profile for any inkset. For me it takes about 30 min and one page of paper to create profile from scratch, if there is a good template for your inks, it will be faster.

Good luck,
Sergei