Piezography for Beginners - Epson 3880

[pflower]

I am in the fortunate position of having 2 fully functioning Epson 3880s.  Having moved office I will soon have them both in the same location which is overkill.  Rather than get rid of one I am thinking about buying into the Piezography B&W system and dedicating one of them for B&W (mostly from scanned B&W medium format negatives).  For the past 5 years or so I have only printed on gloss papers - Harmon Gloss Baryta or Ilford Gold Fibre Silk - mostly colour but some B&W using Epson's ABW (with Michael Chan's profiles when they worked) and later without.  I have also experimented on a very limited basis with Quad Tone RIP but never did more than scratch the surface of it.  Results with both the gloss papers and  the Harmon Gloss warm tone have been perfectly satisfactory.  But from everything I have read the Piezography inks are an improvement on this and since I will ultimately run out of Epson ink why not buy into a B&W system?

I am well aware that there is a huge amount of discussion and other materials to plough through but some of these are very technical and if not actually beyond my comprehension at least beyond my patience to take the trouble at this stage to study.  So I have a couple of very basic questions and wonder if anyone can offer very basic observations:

1.  I have never heard anyone suggest anything other than that these inks do give appreciably better results than the Epson inks whether with QTR or ABW.  Any dissension?
2.  In the darkroom I only printed on Oriental Seagull.  I like the coldest tones possible.  So I assume that the K7 Neutral is the ink set to go for.
3  The really important question.  Just how much of a turnkey solution is this?  I have read about constructing curves in QTR, linearising (sp?) and my brain goes into meltdown.  Colour is easy - no flaming please - get the right icc profile, calibrate your monitor, soft proof (if you want).  Much of the technical discussions about dedicated B&W inkjet printing implies a degree of technical expertise that I might be unwilling to undertake.  My understanding is that the Piezography system comes not only with inks but profiles etc (or which can be constructed at Ink Jet Mall).  Will I need to get my hands dirty by poking around under the bonnet (hood to those in the USA)?  If so then how dirty?
4  Does this system really work well with gloss papers - particularly my favourites - Harmon Gloss Baryta and Gold Fibre Silk?  I have made hundreds of prints in the past, both B&W and colour, on Photo Rag which still look good to my eye but at the present I prefer gloss papers.  Somewhere I think I read that using K7 inks requires a 2nd pass through the printer to put on a gloss optimiser.  Am I imagining that?  Anyone actually printing on Baryta papers with these inks that can share their views?

Thanks

[Jeff-Grant]

I'm only just getting going with Piezography on a 3880. You can read some of my dramas on the InkjetMall forum. What I can say is that there are few places around that give better customer service at all levels. Being in Australia isn't ideal for getting support, fortunately Jon Cone is a night owl. I resolved a problem this past weekend with multiple emails to Jon and rapid responses.

As to your questions:
1. There is massive dissension about which is best, most of it uninformed. I researched and concluded that PZ is the way to go for me. It's not cheap, and there is a bit of a learning curve but I'm starting to get there.
2.No idea
3. You have to use the Cone profiles, and they do make them for a fee, if you wish. I have  a friend who has been using PZ for many years and has never lifted the bonnet. I like to fiddle and I have a spectro so I can make my own soft proof profiles, and check linearity etc. I suspect that you can get very good results using just what is available.
4.I have used IGFS for years, but have only made a couple of trial prints on PZ which look great to my eye. You need to do a second pass with gloss optimiser. The GO changes the appearance and is meant to bring out shadow detail.

Here endeth the ranting of a neophyte. I'm sure someone much more experienced will come along soon. It would be good to ask the same questions on the Inkjetmall site. On the LHS is a live support link. That will get you to Jon Cone. He's the person that you need to talk to first.

[Jager]

Sounds like I'm just a few months ahead of you.  As cool weather descended on the northern hemisphere last fall, I had many of the same thoughts as you.  I was a perfectly happy ABW (and occasional color) printer.  Then Jeff Grant started a thread - it's all Jeff's fault! - on B&W options (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=94806.0).  I suggest you grab a cup of your favorite beverage and sit back and read through that long thread.  You'll get lots of different opinions.

To me, the first conclusion was, yes, there did indeed exist a way to get better-than-ABW black and white prints.  To do that you had two options:  go with a good RIP (ImagePrint was particularly recommended); or use a dedicated inkset, a la Jon Cone's Piezography.

Fast forward three months and I am a dyed-in-the-wool fan of dedicated black and white inksets.  It has changed not just the way I look at printing, but at how I approach photography.  You can read about my early experiences here...  http://jeffreyhughes.net/wordpress/2014/12/21/adventures-in-piezography/

As to your questions... cold tones can be a challenge with carbon-based pigment inks, which start out life very much on the warm side.  Of the five inksets that Jon Cone sells, the coldest tones would be between the K7 Neutral and the K7 Selenium.

There's no need to get involved with curves/profiles any further than using the canned ones that Cone provides.

Is it turnkey?  Yes and no.  There are a number of things - bits of knowledge - you have to absorb at the beginning.  The inkjetmall and piezography websites have that information spread all over the place.  It takes a few hours of reading to piece it all together.  Once you've done that, it truly is a turnkey system.  It's a very simple workflow.  Just know that you'll need to invest a bit of time at the beginning.

I print both glossy and matte - probably a 70/30 split in favor of glossy.  Like you, I preferred baryta papers before moving to Piezography and that has not changed.  I favor Canson's Baryta Photographique (pretty much a dead-ringer for Gold Fiber Silk) and Platine Fibre Rag and Cone's Studio Type 5.  They all print exceptionally well with Piezography.

And, yes, for any glossy prints you run a second pass through the printer, the second time applying the "gloss optimizer."  It works exceptionally well.

I'll be the first to acknowledge that mine is not an unbiased opinion when it comes to Piezography.  Something that fundamentally changes your photographic worldview will do that.

I cannot recommend it highly enough.

[Jeff-Grant]

I had no idea that I would start such a long thread. It took on a life of its own. I just read Jeff's blog on piezography, and recognised the same moment of seeing what I barely knew was there in the image but was in the print. A shot taken in strong NZ winter light with very wispy haze, barely visible but there on the print. I suspect that it's just this subtlety that differentiates PZ from everything else, and why many people claim that other methods are just as good.

[Paul Roark]

I too started with a Piezo system.  They put out nice prints.  However, I must add just a few notes here.

First, as to which system does better, if longevity is an issue, the best are the 100% carbon pigment inksets like the Cone Carbon Sepia and MIS Eboni inksets.  Second to those are the OEM B&W printing approaches, and the third party neutralized carbon inksets like all the Peizo inksets aside from the carbon sepia come in behind the OEM inksets.  See http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/ .  I have summarized a few of the Aardenburg-Imaging numbers at page 2 of
http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/Eboni-6.pdf .

The big problem the third party neutralized inksets have had is that the color pigments they use are not as good as the OEMs'.  As such, they have suffered from color shifting -- often to greenish.  For a comparison, see the Aardenburg-Imaging tests of the MIS Eboni and Cone Neutral prints at 140 Mlux-hours of exposure.  I'm put a snapshot at
http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/Eboni-v-Cone-N-HPR-140hrs.jpg .

I would not worry much about this for medium term display, but for those pursuing fine art, it is relevant.

Among the things one can do to avoid tone changes in a neutralized carbon inkset is to use the best pigments  and also minimize the hue angle between the pigments used to cool the carbon.  My latest efforts use Epson C and Canon Lucia Blue. 
See http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/LAB-color-wheel.pdf  for a visual that shows the problem. 
(My efforts will be documented at http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/Eboni-Variable-Tone.pdf ) 

As to glossy v. matte, I would encourage the fine art types to read this LuLa post: 
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=87926.0

(I just use dyes on metallic for glossy without glazing.  Once there is glazing, there is little visual difference.  Who needs all the artifacts?)

Once one gains enough knowledge to be comfortable with less turnkey solutions, there is a lot of money to be saved by DIY solutions.  We're talking about carbon ink so inexpensive that is ceases to be a factor.  Bulk carbon pigments and dilution base are very inexpensive.  See http://www.inksupply.com/roarkslab.cfm  (I have no financial or other connection to MIS aside from working with them as they commercialize some of my open source solutions.)

As to truly neutral prints, remember than your eyes will do a white balance on whatever is near the print.  So, for display, look at the mat board color.  As a practical matter, keep it just a hair cooler than the print paper itself.  Then it is the difference between that and the print tones that will govern how "cool" a print looks.  The "cool" silver prints I made had relatively flat Lab A and B responses from the paper white.  A light selenium toning caused the shadows to become cooler (looking darker in warm inside light), and the Lab A took on a slight rise from the paper white.  Following that, look at
http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/ArchesBW-EbVT-Neutral-qtr.jpg to see my latest neutral toned "Eboni Variable Tone" inkset print on Arches watercolor paper. 

Start simple, but know that there is a very long learning curve out there.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com

[deanwork]

I've been using Piezogrpahy for about 12 years and they have always been the most beautiful inkjet monochrome available, and I've tried them all. The Ebony stuff clogged my printers and I never liked it. I always found it to be an amateur version of what Jon Cone created.

I have a client who brought over some prints recently from his Ebony 6 output on Canson media. They were ok, but no better that what I can achieve with the HPZ and that quad set up, or the Canon using True Black and White with a straight forward oem ink set up and custom linearizaton. They were warm neutral, not neutral.

 I took the same file and made some much superior Piezography K7 carbon prints from the same files which were from drum scans of 4x5 negatives. When I printed the K7 Carbon on Epson Hot Press media they were very close to the same print color as the Ebony 6 prints but much more dimensional.

You get what you pay for. I would be very cautious about using that Ebony 6 mixture, as the dilutions of the ligher grays have an issue of the pigment becoming unsuspended from the base. That can kill a print head. Cone inks stay uniform in the ink carts and don't require constant shaking to stay mixed. They have a unique formulation that keeps them from breaking down and clogging the nozzles. In my experience they function better than even Epson's inks in their own printers.

I do large format K7 Carbon work for a guy who has spent the last 25 years doing very high-end platinum/palladium work and now he's switched over to Piezogrphy K7 totally. He had no background in digital at all until this year. The permanence is truly amazing and they are the tonally richest and sharpest prints that I have ever made in any media.  The light values are in a class all their own for an inkjet process. All "carbon" based print systems are not created equal. Piezography K7 is not difficult at all. Once it is set up you don't even have to think about it. Anybody can achieve great results from a good file. With QTR it is no brainer these days.

John

[Ken Doo]

I've been printing with K7 Piezography for a few years now, and love it, having started with an old 9800 and now am with a 9890 which I converted from new to K7 Piezography MPS to offer both matte and glossy K7 prints to photographers/clients.

The only thing to really be aware in prior to conversion, is to really make sure that your printer is in top shape (or start with a new printer) otherwise it just might not make it off the operating (conversion) table!  The resources for Piezography are all over the place, sorta like a great artist's mind  .  But it's not too hard to pull the correct resources, once you've made the decision on the type of printer you are converting and your desired ink set.  It really is easier than it looks---just follow the instructions that come with your conversion kit, and if needed, additional guidance from Jon/Dana/Wells. 

I've found it best to stick with medias that you like best and not go crazy with printing on a bunch of mediocre papers. It can be as easy as you want using the provided curves, or you can choose to make it more challenging and difficult as you'd like delving into the curves, mixing inks, split toning with different sets, etc.  There are little tips/tricks you will invariably pick up on the way. Maintenance is no different than with a normal Epson. 

Ken

[richardboutwell]

I have been comparing Eboni and Peizography inks for the last few months and now prefer the Cone inks—the color, the whole system, consistency from batch to batch and shade to shade between the different sets, and the encapsulation.

Based on the topic being "peizography for beginners" stay away from the Eboni-6 inkset. The MIS Eboni retailer changed ink formulation at least twice in the last year, and none of the existing profiles will work for the new inks. You will need to make your own QTR profiles. Paul has written a lot about the inks, and different ways to create QTR profiles for them, but it is up to you to make it work. As for the color differences, the Eboni is more "neutral" but it has a warm/green cast when compared to the Cone Carbon K6 or K7 (Carbon Sepia is an old name for the 100% carbon ink set).

The Eboni might be great for tinkering on the cheap, but the Piezo is better for getting the job done. It is like the eternal open/closed source argument—find the kit and figure it out, or buy the product and be happy with it. The Cone inks are a serious investment, but when you take the Eboni/QTR learning curve, your time, and materials into consideration the eboni might not be as inexpensive as it seems. Paul will say that you can just use the Epson driver, but i don't consider that a worthwhile endeavor.

All that being said, you need to follow the instructions for Piezography and not get things mixed up. The biggest problem people have are mixing up inks when refilling their cartridges, or using the wrong color settings.

[Paul Roark]

The different systems obviously have their fan bases, and there are good reasons people choose one system over another.  Frankly, the market has largely spoken to that in the sense that the OEM K3 "ABW" systems dominate now, and I've seen some good work from them.  Add QTR, and I've seen excellent work with Epson K3 systems.

For a beginner using a 3880, I don't recommend the Eboni approach.  Go with OEM or Cone.  The only platform that is supported reasonably well for newbies on the Eboni side is the 1400/1430. 

Personally, I'm a former darkroom worker who enjoys getting the most from the materials of my medium.  That's part of the trip for me.  For what I do, the high carbon content printing (with Eboni currently, but no a lock there) wins on the science and, if you're an experienced printer, the practice also.  It's not for most but for those who want the best are in the "darkroom worker" category, when they're ready...

My point of posting anything was simply to disagree with some of the misinformation that is around.  I'll do that again here.

There was a period when Eboni became inconsistent because the founder of the ink company Image Specialists died.  IS is now owned by STS Inks and the batches are very stable and in many respects better than the original.  (You probably will not see any other carbon that achieves a 1.7+ dmax on uncoated watercolor paper.)

Eboni-6 does not clog.  It was "invented" in response to a high end (Guggenheim award winning) watercolorist who ask me to develop a carbon inkset that she could smear on watercolor paper.  So, I put no binder (glue) in the dilution base.  The inkset failed from the watercolorist's perspective because the carbon would not budge with a wet brush, but it turned out to be a terrific photo inkset.  No binder/glue means no clogging.  The glue in the inks is a huge part of the clogging problems others have.     

Eboni-6 systems can be very inexpensive, which is why a number of large institutions use them.  It's not why I use Eboni carbon.  Note that I use Epson dyes for my low end glossy printing, and I'm using Epson & Canon color pigs for the toner I've developed.  I'm after the best, not the cheapest.  It's  simply in my nature to push the envelope, whether it's mixing my own POTA for Tech Pan before Kodak commercialized a developer, or using 8x10 digital internegatives and enlarging through Apo-Rodagon optics, or shooting with Leica glass adapted to the Sony 36 MP body.  I appreciate good prices, but that is not at all what guides my work.

The primary disadvantage to the Eboni-type systems in wide format is that it requires more frequent agitation than the mainstream OEM color and gray pigments.  (Third party carbon-color blends also tend to separate in wide format systems.)  I use a centrifuge to do comparative settlement and separation testing.  The original Eboni settled significantly faster than the OEM inks.  The new Eboni (v. 1.1) settles at about the same rate as Epson MK.  In dilute form, in wide format printers, I still recommend bi-weekly agitation.  (None of this matters for desktop printers where the carts move with the head.)

Eboni-6 (except perhaps in the 1400 family) is for those who can profile their own work.  It's not turnkey.  It's analogous to the old B&W darkroom.  It's for those who want that kind of involvement with their medium.  But for those who do enjoy that degree of involvement with their medium, the 100% or high carbon printing (exemplified by Eboni-6 and its derivatives currently), it does occupy the high end of the spectrum.

Is there  an even more lightfast medium?  Not silver, for sure, but yes, I have my eye on a next step, and it'll work in inkjets just like Eboni.  There is always a frontier for those of us who enjoy that part of the journey.

Cheers,

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com

[pflower]

Thanks for all the replies.  I particularly found Jeff Hughes' account helpful.  As, I think, he notes there is a wealth of material out there but not necessarily in an immediately coherent order.  I think I will go down this route but will wait until I have a few weeks uninterrupted by other concerns so that I can concentrate fully on it.  In the meantime I intend to explore QTR rather more seriously than I had done previously.

Thanks to all.