Piezography: Talk me into/out of it

[roscoetuff-Skip Mersereau]

Yeah.... the monitor. The one I bought years ago ended up with general rather than just photo use. It wasn't the real thing, but good for the day. Need to upgrade that.
I've used only the default curves, and not gone to the super detailed layer output file level I've seen.... but I think that's the difference in large measure with what Richard Boutwell's doing.

I agree that you can spend a ton of $ and time trying to kick this forward, and that getting someone else to print starts to crank the numbers. But the inks aren't cheap either. I've used some of Cone's papers to match the default curves.... and there's enough promise there I'm still ambitious that this is the way to go. Real question is about what to do with the P800.... keep using Epson inks or run the software to convert to Cone's. Paul Roark was mixing his own I think - at least for a while, but I've read enough of the problems with that approach that I'm happy with Cone's inks. Just have been adjusting to our new home, setup, learning LF and haven't really done a lot of printing since the move last year. But with winter here shortly, it's what's up next. P600 was easy to convert, but the P800 requires a software jailbreak. More tech and computer time than I really wanted, but I guess I'm not really inclined to do darkroom printing... and though I've read about carbon printing processes is intriguing, there's only so many skills, tools, techniques etc. I can throw at these problems.

Thanks for your insight and shared experience. May I ask which monitor? There's one that uses a gecko as it's logo I've looked at online for years but not pulled the trigger. And... are you printing in color (with Cone inks) or just referring to the range of Black, Whites and Grays as "color" (metaphorically)?

[Ken Lee]

Thanks for your insight and shared experience. May I ask which monitor? There's one that uses a gecko as it's logo I've looked at online for years but not pulled the trigger. And... are you printing in color (with Cone inks) or just referring to the range of Black, Whites and Grays as "color" (metaphorically)?

I print in monochrome only.

Fed up with wasting time and materials with my 2017 iMac monitor, I followed Piezography's recommendation and got a 24-inch EIZO. It certainly shows better color fidelity and range and can built-in calibrate itself all the way down to 60 or 80 candles (can't remember) which I find important because I make my prints to match typical home illumination, not the bright spot lighting we see in some galleries.

Perhaps at somewhere like B&H in New York, one can walk around, compare monitors and make an even better choice. As things are improving all the time (in this domain anyhow) advice soon becomes obsolete. There are probably several newer and better models than mine from EIZO or NEC, the two vendors I'm aware of.

Those Vermonters are among the most knowledgeable folks I've encountered. Frankly I'd hesitate to disregard their advice on any topic.

[CreationBear]

I print in monochrome only.

Ken, since many of us have made use of your PS "toning tutorials" over the years, that was an immediate question I had. I did a quick recce of the Cone website and saw that there were several toning presets with different values of warmth/coolness for either shadows or highlights, but didn't know if there was a way to leverage them to emulate precisely what you've been able to create digitally. (If it sounds as if I'm agitating for you to outline your piezographic workflow, well, you've already shown that you're willing to work for free...)

[Ken Lee]

Ken, since many of us have made use of your PS "toning tutorials" over the years, that was an immediate question I had. I did a quick recce of the Cone website and saw that there were several toning presets with different values of warmth/coolness for either shadows or highlights, but didn't know if there was a way to leverage them to emulate precisely what you've been able to create digitally. (If it sounds as if I'm agitating for you to outline your piezographic workflow, well, you've already shown that you're willing to work for free...)

The toning methods I've shared previously for Photoshop take advantage of some very precise tools like Layers, Levels, BlendIf, Color Range, etc. However, without a finely calibrated printing engine, we can't necessarily print what Photoshop lets us define. Our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, we might say.

By comparison, the 3-channel mix we can specify with Quadtone RIP is a more basic tool for controlling colors along the brightness scale, but the inks and linearization tools provided by Piezography give us the ability to print them precisely in hex-tone.

I wrote a short article about my choice of paper and warm-tone color settings for Piezography Pro here. You can use them as a point of departure. Please contact me with any corrections, comments or questions.

[Willie]

"and though I've read about carbon printing processes is intriguing, there's only so many skills, tools, techniques etc. I can throw at these problems."
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Are you talking the digital carbon inkset for the printer or real hand done Carbon prints as Jim Fitzgerald and Sandy King do?