Digital BW, The Print

John,

I don't know if you saw my earlier post on this matter. I found a whole set of  
my PiezoTone prints turned to junk after 2 months of exposure to normal room 
light (no sun). The culprit is the black ink. 

These were my first large scale prints with the new inks from a 7000. I had 
bought the hype that these were all pigment and extensively tested etc. When 
Paul Roark first posted his fade tests proving that the black ink is the worst in 
the industry, Jon Cone considered it yet another malicious attempt on this list 
at sabotaging his sales. He countered with the argument that only a small 
amount of pure black is used in the driver and any fade would be of minor 
consequence. And I bought that too.
Then he had to explain how the black ink is not all pigment as originally 
promised in the sales pitch, but contains "dyestuff" which is supposedly 
different from "dye". I thought, OK, whatever, it's proprietary technology, we 
can't expect details. So, in the end, I bought the inks trusting that if they fade it 
would still be better than the old inks.

Well,  now it turns out that the black self destructs in only a couple of months. 
Probably faster than Epson dyes! It turns out that Paul's tests were telling the 
truth and there was no sabotage intended. Your prints failed far worse than 
mine, because, as Martin noted, you are using RGB curves and can't keep the 
black from coming all the way up the scale. 

Regardless, the solution for now is to use the MIS-FS black and return the 
PT-K to Inkjetmall for refund. In fact they should issue a recall - or at least 
place a warning on their site. Realizing that you bought the inks based on 
posted reviews (one of which comes from Martin here) I should think these 
reviews should now be amended to prevent people from buying this stuff 
unaware of the unstable black ink - common to all the PT inksets. At best 
PiezoTones, as they currently stand, can be used for boxed portfolios which 
will mostly stay in  the dark.

I would think twice about using the Gen4 black as substitute, either, since 
Mediastreet was honest enough to say that it contains 25% dye. 

Maybe the conclusion is that if you need truly high dmax, you must coat your 
prints. After seeing many samples recently from a local source, uncoated 
prints seem weak and fragile by comparison. But I digress....


Antonis



--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "chervinsky02144" 
<chervinsky@d...> wrote:
 I am, 
> however, quite disappointed with the inks lightfastness.  Further, 
> when the PiezoTone ink fades it tends to turn pink.