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Author Topic: to piezo on not to piezo  (Read 25988 times)

Herbc

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to piezo on not to piezo
« on: February 24, 2015, 11:07:29 am »

I am not a candidate for converting my own printer to piezo ink, and have never had the occasion to see a b/w print made with them.

My printing is on an Epson 3800 on Canson Baryata Infinity Photographique, which produces work way better than the non baryata papers I have tried.

for an upcoming gallery competition, I will submit a few images, usually get in, with at most two images.

The question: is piezo going to make my regular prints  pale by comparison?  Getting it done commercially is not cheap.
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Some Guy

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Re: to piezo on not to piezo
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2015, 11:46:53 am »

Send one of your prints to someone who does it and see what you think of it.   Compare it using the same paper and image made on your personal 3800.

Personally, I'm not that impressed with it.  Learning curve can be arduous with learning linearization and/or paying them $100 for each new paper you want to have profiled and wait for the results to come back which I think is an absurdity too!  They should offer their software to do it for pennies, or even free, since the price of the ink is very high and many have the hardware to read the values anyway.  Sending off $100 each time you want to try something that may not be working right or some new paper and waiting is ridiculous, imho.  Having a customer in your shop wanting it today or tomorrow isn't going to work if you have to wait 2-3 weeks for a profile to come back.

Now I often leave my images in RGB and then I can tone it to where I want in a normal printer.  That or use the Epson B&W default printing settings.  You could alter the curves a bit in your editing software to smooth out shadows or highlights, even Qimage can allow for you to do an S-curve filter if you like using your 3-4 black shades.

I do like using their gloss coating stuff verses spraying a print.  Less messy and smoother.  That part is a winner.  Cost of doing piezo can be very high overall though.

Try and buy, or not.

SG
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Herbc

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Re: to piezo on not to piezo
« Reply #2 on: February 24, 2015, 01:20:55 pm »

Thanks.  My usual flow is sRgb then to Silver EFX, then to print.

I will probably make a CBIP print and send it off along with my file for a proof. 
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Jager

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Re: to piezo on not to piezo
« Reply #3 on: February 24, 2015, 03:20:09 pm »

Learning curve can be arduous with learning linearization and/or paying them $100 for each new paper you want to have profiled and wait for the results to come back which I think is an absurdity too!  They should offer their software to do it for pennies, or even free, since the price of the ink is very high and many have the hardware to read the values anyway.  Sending off $100 each time you want to try something that may not be working right or some new paper and waiting is ridiculous, imho.  Having a customer in your shop wanting it today or tomorrow isn't going to work if you have to wait 2-3 weeks for a profile to come back.


I'm going to disagree.  There certainly is no need to learn linearization.  Nor is there a need to pay for custom curves unless you have an unusual paper or your printer has drifted significantly from original spec.  Canned curves exist for most mainstream papers.

There definitely is an upfront cost to getting started with Piezography.  You have to buy the refillable carts.  And you have to buy a set of the Piezo inks.  The Piezo ink cost is actually about half what it is with Epson (around .37/ml for the 220ml bottles from Cone versus .67/ml for the OEM Epson carts from Atlex).

And there is, as you might expect when moving to a 3rd-party black-only ink set, something of a learning curve.  I don't know that i would call it arduous so much as irritating.  I've complained before that Cone has too much necessary information spread all over his web site.  A prospective user should plan on spending an afternoon perusing the forums there.  That said, 90% of what you need to know is laid out very clearly in one place - in the Piezography Manual Cone provides on his web site.  It's an easy hour read.

Is Piezography worth it?  Last fall I was where you are at now.  I printed my work on a 3880.  Mostly B&W on Canson's Baryta Photographique.  I liked Epson's ABW mode very much (I still like it).  None of the galleries or shows where I exhibited looked at me askance.

Today, I wouldn't dream of going back to a K3 solution.  I love the fidelity and nuance in having seven blacks.  But the key word is 'nuance.'  You need not worry that your OEM prints will suffer mightily next to someone's Piezo prints (or silver gelatin, or whatever other process).  At the end of the day, a great image is still much more about the image than anything else.

Paul Roark

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Re: to piezo on not to piezo
« Reply #4 on: February 24, 2015, 08:46:01 pm »

There are learning curves for all of the approaches to printing -- OEM or dedicated B&W.  There are also some ways to lessen the dedicated B&W steps. 

With respect to linearization, know that QTR has a tool -- StepWedge Tool -- that can do a fairly good job with a flatbed scanner and the Kodak Q13 (small) color separation and grayscale guide.  See http://www.quadtonerip.com/html/QTRdownload.html and read the Readme PDF that accompanies it.

Being a Windows user, I frankly recommend Mac people get a program that allows the use of the Windows QTR GUI for making profiles.  The profiles can then be used on Macs with their different printing procedures.

There are also ways to simplify making profiles.  See, for example, some that I describe at page 11 and following of http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/Eboni-4-Plus.pdf .  Ignore the inkset in the example.  The basics of partitioning a grayscale inkset are independent of the specific inkset.  Once you learn the system, it's relatively easy to profile any inkset with any compatible paper.  And those profiles are going to be a lot more consistent than playing with the OEM "ABW" tools.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com

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Stefan Ohlsson

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Re: to piezo on not to piezo
« Reply #5 on: February 25, 2015, 02:42:56 am »

I am not a candidate for converting my own printer to piezo ink, and have never had the occasion to see a b/w print made with them.

My printing is on an Epson 3800 on Canson Baryata Infinity Photographique, which produces work way better than the non baryata papers I have tried.

for an upcoming gallery competition, I will submit a few images, usually get in, with at most two images.

The question: is piezo going to make my regular prints  pale by comparison?  Getting it done commercially is not cheap.
We print B&W on a daily basis with ImagePrint's B&W profiles. Also considered to change one of our printers to a piezo printer. So we sent a file to Piezography and have them print it on a paper that we are familiar with. We then printed the same image with our regular workflow, that is with ImagePrint and with a tint that gave it the same colors that we saw in the Piezography print. And they were very similar. The blacks weren't better in the piezography print, we didn't see any difference in the shadow areas.

I think that it is more important to use a workflow that you are familiar with and have adapted to. So I wouldn't change my workflow at this time, better to really fine tune the image to the process that you are using.
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Herbc

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Re: to piezo on not to piezo
« Reply #6 on: February 26, 2015, 11:46:46 am »

Thanks to all- I think I will get better at Quadtone RIP, which I have been using all along with pretty decent results.  Save  some serious $$. :)
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ognita

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Re: to piezo on not to piezo
« Reply #7 on: March 15, 2015, 09:32:52 pm »

Different question but somehow related. I am creating a custom curves using QTR with K3 inks for Tecco papers.

After linearization of the curves, do you still go ahead and set custom ink limits and cross-overs?

Thanks!
ReD

richardboutwell

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Re: to piezo on not to piezo
« Reply #8 on: March 16, 2015, 05:50:08 pm »

Different question but somehow related. I am creating a custom curves using QTR with K3 inks for Tecco papers.

After linearization of the curves, do you still go ahead and set custom ink limits and cross-overs?

Thanks!
ReD

This is more of a general QTR question than a Piezography question, but you never want to change the ink limits or cross overs after the linearization step (unless the cross overs weren't set correctly in the first place).

What follows might only make sense to people who have made their own QTR profiles, and have some familiarity with the process—things like printing the ink separation files and measuring to find the cross over points, or the linearization steps.

The initial position and overlapping of the individual gray ink curves (K, LK, LLK positions in the UCK3 printers) is based on the ink limits and cross over points set at the beginning of the profile creation process. The cross over point for each gray ink is based on the the 100% patch for that ink channel and the relative patch of the next darker ink, both of which will be different when you change the ink limit for any of the gray ink channels. Those individual ink curves are then shifted left or right (lighter or darker) based on other gray curve/linearization settings in the qdif/text file. If you have a problem linearizing a profile it is better to edit with the shadow or gray gamma settings rather than messing with the ink limits or cross over points.

Basically any change to the ink limit or cross over (or gray curve) settings will require relinearizing the profile.

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ognita

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Re: to piezo on not to piezo
« Reply #9 on: March 16, 2015, 06:46:38 pm »

Thank you for your reply, Richard - appreciate it :)

And apologies to the group for derailing the thread.
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