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Thread: 6 years......with inkjet

  1. #21
    Ron Miller
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    Re: 6 years......with inkjet

    Wayne,
    I just started printing last month with a respectable printer (3880) using ABW. I'm wondering if you could provide the adjustments you use to get paladium brown. I'm still in the experimental stage with these k3 inks and printer.

    Regards,
    Ron

    Quote Originally Posted by Wayne Lambert View Post
    I've been twice to the show that includes Kirk's photographs. It's an excellent show in a large space in a very prestigious venue---the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe. Kirk's prints are just inside the door---the first photographs you see when you walk in. They are large prints and are memorable for all the right reasons. Congratulations, Kirk! My favorite of the five is "Private Altar" which seems to glow with an inner light.

    My aesthetic experience with digital prints is similar to Kirk's---I have come to admire them. It took me a while because earlier (as some of you may recall) I had concerns about wholesale retouching of images in Photoshop. Now I see that most LF photographers (all of us, of course!) adhere to some kind of code of ethics and pretty much limit Photoshop manipulations to contrast adjustments, dodging, and burning.

    Last year I wanted to print in platinum/palladium some 4x5- and 8x10-inch in-camera negatives that I had originally made for gelatin-silver printing. The contrast of the negatives was just too low for pt/pd. To increase the contrast I intensified some with selenium toner and some with the silver intensifier sold by Photographers' Formulary. Both processes worked well. The silver intensifier is especially good for adding considerable contrast. However, I overdid a couple of negatives in the silver intensifier and got nervous about continuing with some favorite negatives. So I thought I would see what I could do with these weaker negatives and digital printing. I scanned the 8x10 and 4x5 negatives with an Epson V700 scanner and made some prints using Cone Piezography K7 inks (sepia) on various matte papers and some prints using Epson Ultrachrome K3 inks on Epson Hot Press Natural paper. With the Epson inks I used ABW to adjust the ink color to a "palladium brown" which I like. I didn't enlarge the prints; all were printed at a 1:1 ratio. I was amazed at the print quality, both the prints I made with the Cone inks and those made with the Epson inks. All of the digital prints are sharper (bare tree branches against the sky kind of thing) than pt/pd contact prints on smooth Weston paper and the tonal quality is excellent---for example, very smooth skin tones. I attribute (with no furthur experimental evidence) at least part of the excellent print quality to the fact that I scanned large negatives and printed at a 1:1 ratio. Personally, I admire those made with the Epson inks more than those made with the Cone inks probably because of the ink color and the smooth surface and warm color of the Epson Hot Press Natural paper.

    Finally, for the past couple of months, in my new gallery, I have had the opportunity to view the Epson ink prints and a group of palladium (Na2 process) prints side by side in good lighting (about 25 of each type). My considered opinion is that the two types are virtually indistinguishable (behind acrylic glazing) at normal and extended viewing distances. Viewed close, the digital prints are sharper. Virtually indistinguishable, with one caveat: As one of my visitors (a non-photographer) remarked after viewing the prints, "The platinum/palladium prints just seem to be...um...um...a little "richer". I agree, it's very subjective, indefinable, but the platinum/palladium prints do seem to be a little...um..."richer." I'll leave it at that.

    Wayne

  2. #22

    Join Date
    Oct 2006
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    Re: 6 years......with inkjet

    Quote Originally Posted by gevalia View Post
    Wayne,
    I just started printing last month with a respectable printer (3880) using ABW. I'm wondering if you could provide the adjustments you use to get paladium brown. I'm still in the experimental stage with these k3 inks and printer.

    Regards,
    Ron
    I'm sure Wayne has his own secret sauce but a good place to start with B&W ABW settings for the 3800/3880 is Eric Chan's website where he chronicles and documents his workflow and provides a large number of ICC profiles for various papers.

    http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan...wprofiles.html

    I used his information with my 3800 with great success.

    Don Bryant

  3. #23
    Ron Miller
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    Re: 6 years......with inkjet

    Quote Originally Posted by D. Bryant View Post
    I'm sure Wayne has his own secret sauce but a good place to start with B&W ABW settings for the 3800/3880 is Eric Chan's website where he chronicles and documents his workflow and provides a large number of ICC profiles for various papers.

    http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan...wprofiles.html

    I used his information with my 3800 with great success.

    Don Bryant
    Don, I've been using Eric's info since day 1. Just didn't see any palladium references there. Did I miss that?

  4. #24

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    Re: 6 years......with inkjet

    Ron and Don,
    I once read that the color of a palladium print is a "warm brown tinged with rose." I've always liked that description. Developed in potassium oxalate, some of my prints do come close. As Don surmises, I experimented with various ABW settings trying to get close to that color. Then I read on Brooks Jensen's site (blog section, digital printing, 1/27/2010) that he prefers a brown produced by the settings "Tone dark, Horizontal 25, Vertical 50." This setting is between yellow and red on the ABW color wheel. Everything else on the "Color Controls" page is zero or Off. I tried that and found that it is almost a perfect match for my palladium prints. The "tinged with rose" part seems to be a bit elusive, though.

    Other settings (for printing on Epson Hot Press Natural paper) include Ultrasmooth Fine Art Paper, Print Quality Level 4 (Superfine-1440x720 dpi), Paper Configuration all zero except Paper Thickness 5, Platen Gap Auto. Matte black ink, of course.

    Wayne
    Wayne Lambert
    Colorado Springs, Colorado
    www.waynelambert.net

  5. #25
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
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    Re: 6 years......with inkjet

    Quote Originally Posted by Wayne Lambert View Post
    All of the digital prints are sharper (bare tree branches against the sky kind of thing) than pt/pd contact prints on smooth Weston paper ...
    Wayne, I'm really glad you're making this observation, because every time I do it people around here treat me like the town drunk. But it's true (that the piezo prints are sharper than the equivalent contact print, not that I'm the town drunk, at least I don't try to be).

    I have a few images that I've printed as gelatin silver contact prints and also as piezo prints at 1:1 size. Even though my piezo prints are all on matte surface paper, they are subjectively sharper and more tactile looking than the glossy silver prints. Of course with enlargements, it's no contest. At 3X linear enlargement, the silver prints look like sharp enlargements but the piezo prints look practically like contact prints.

  6. #26
    LF/ULF Carbon Printer Jim Fitzgerald's Avatar
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    Re: 6 years......with inkjet

    Kirk, congratulations on finding the method that works for you. I personally think that whatever printing process one uses the end result must be a fine print. I could never master the digital work flow with my large format negatives. I found silver chloride printing on Azo to be right for me and the way I am wired. Then several years ago now I found carbon transfer printing and I will never look back. Once you find the process that touches your soul as an artist you use this to express yourself. Kirks work is wonderful and that is what matters. The images printed in the way that works for him is a great thing. Again, congratulations. I know how you feel.

  7. #27

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    Re: 6 years......with inkjet

    Jim,
    Good points. Nicely stated.
    Wayne
    Wayne Lambert
    Colorado Springs, Colorado
    www.waynelambert.net

  8. #28

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    Re: 6 years......with inkjet

    Quote Originally Posted by gevalia View Post
    Don, I've been using Eric's info since day 1. Just didn't see any palladium references there. Did I miss that?
    No, just thought I would throw that out as a starting point. As Wayne implies in his follow up post, start somewhere and fine tune.

    FWIW, I print palladium exclusively using inkjet negatives and I can closely replicate an inkjet print to the palladium prints, either from in camera or inkjet negs. If I had the space for another large printer I might try Cone inks or MIS Carbon 6/7. Cone prints will definitely out class the ABWs in sharpness and richness if they are done correctly.

  9. #29

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    Re: 6 years......with inkjet

    Quote Originally Posted by Wayne Lambert View Post
    Ron and Don,
    I once read that the color of a palladium print is a "warm brown tinged with rose." I've always liked that description. Developed in potassium oxalate, some of my prints do come close. As Don surmises, I experimented with various ABW settings trying to get close to that color. Then I read on Brooks Jensen's site (blog section, digital printing, 1/27/2010) that he prefers a brown produced by the settings "Tone dark, Horizontal 25, Vertical 50." This setting is between yellow and red on the ABW color wheel. Everything else on the "Color Controls" page is zero or Off. I tried that and found that it is almost a perfect match for my palladium prints. The "tinged with rose" part seems to be a bit elusive, though.

    Other settings (for printing on Epson Hot Press Natural paper) include Ultrasmooth Fine Art Paper, Print Quality Level 4 (Superfine-1440x720 dpi), Paper Configuration all zero except Paper Thickness 5, Platen Gap Auto. Matte black ink, of course.

    Wayne
    Here is the LensWork permalink link:

    http://daily.lenswork.com/2010/12/ab...-settings.html

  10. #30

    Join Date
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    Re: 6 years......with inkjet

    I'm glad you posted the link, Don, because I had misrepresented one of Brooks's settings. He does use Horizontal 25 and Vertical 50, but for Printer Color Adjustment, Tone, he uses "Normal," not "Dark." Apparently in my experimentation I decided I liked "Dark" better and that is what I use. But as he sagely notes, do your own experimentation!
    Wayne
    Wayne Lambert
    Colorado Springs, Colorado
    www.waynelambert.net

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