Digital BW, The Print

I do not know if there is enough time in the world to read the BW list as
well as our own Piezography lists. I sleep little as it is.

But I think that I understand that I have caused a stir over at BW with the
idea that I am dissing workflows and I am not. I would never put down any
experimental printmaking. There is nothing greater to me than experimenting
with process and especially print process.

My web page that illustrates a workflow process did so to illustrate
longevity in inks and not any qualitative differences between the RGB
process and PiezographyBW plugin. Now we are not experts on RGB workflow
process and this is the first one we have ever printed. We did so to see why
a customer's prints faded fast with the RGB process when it did not in
Piezography. So we followed her workflow which was to:

take a grayscale image,
Then she applied an output levels correction to it that made 0 , 15.
Then she applied a curve called the John Woolf Full Spectrum Curve to it.
Then she printed it through the EPSON driver setting the color inks option,
and grayscale as the space. Then in advanced settings she chose EPSON -
Matte Heavy Weight, ahe set the dpi to 1440, and she set the color settings
to Photo Realistic and she printed. We printed to a 980.

Her results look great when first printed. Kudos to John Woolf for figuring
out something like this using an RGB driver. I can see why this has been so
popular. That there are many of these processes boggles our collective minds
here and makes us smile at the ingenuity required!

What we wanted to do however, was see "how" it prints. "How" - meaning what
inks print where. So we loaded up color inks except we put a clear cart in
the black position so we could see the under inks. Using mono inks it is
impossible to tell what prints where.

-- When we did it in color we noticed that in Woolf, the lightest tones are
printed with the cyan ink. PIezographyBW plugin prints the light tones only
with the yellow ink.

-- We noticed that Woolf also printed the mid tones with the cyan ink and
PiezographyBW Plugin uses only magenta to print these after yellow has
tapered out. 

-- We noticed that the Woolf 3/4 tones begin to phase out of cyan and
tapered to instead mostly the yellow ink which had a screening of cyan and
magenta and it made it appear as a gray. This is the position in which
PiezographyBW begins to print cyan nearly full into 3/4 and then reducing
slightly, but none the less - with a heaping of cyan ink, after tapering out
magenta.

-- When we added the black cart in to the process, we were surprised to see
that black ink carried so much information in the Woolf process.
PiezographyBW uses a short black "plate" (if you know CMYK process - short
is steep and does not extend past the 3/4 range, and most often falls far
short of it. Short blacks are used with little GCR or UCR. PiezographyBW
prints its deepest concentration of black ink over a significantly dark
under printing of cyan. In Woolf, the deepest concentration of black ink is
over very little ink at all. This is a significant difference.

Whether dedicated quad printers using RGB drivers think this is correct or
not, this is how Quad Blacks are printed via a CMYK driver. We published
this original method for IRIS nearly 10 years ago when we produced a table
generator which could control mono inks. The use of bell shaped curves can
be written with software that controls individual inks by supplying output
values and the control is different than trying to do this in Photoshop
because tables do not have restrictions and any point can be brought in or
out or turned on or off. The early IRIS mono products we sold also used
supplied pre-sets. Both our IRIS process, and our first EPSON process, used
three inks in all overprint locations and PiezographyBW plugin uses two.
Otherwise, very similar concept.

There are many reasons for not wanting to take a black long and that escapes
the length of this already long post.

We rely in PiezographyBW, on under ink in a very prescribed fashion for
longevity in the new PiezoTone original black position. So we allowed for
the Black ink to be brought up in Optical Density to a new level with the
use of a metal complex because we could rely on the undercolor of a
completely stable ink (cyan position) and one which had extraordinary
longevity. All shadow tones in PiezographyBW driver therefore are the result
of two inks mixing (cyan and black position). What is left is the mixed
compound. That is what we tested and settled on for an endpoint which was
similar to current products using our driver.

The Woolf process does not afford this type of protection to the shadows.
The shadows were made instead with black ink and a rather large amount of
yellow with small % of cyan and magenta. This compound is not good for
longevity. That it apparently extends past 50% was particularly alarming for
us to see. We never saw that coming. In Woolf the black ink carries the
majority of the 50% and higher tonal info - completely opposite way of
working from PiezographyBW which carries with magenta and cyan.

So we did not do this experiment to either dis nor dismiss RGB workflows but
only to see why an ink's longevity would perform differently with one
software over another. And we did not do this for a "marketing advantage".
Although there will be a replacement for our current software, we also like
selling inks to other software users and that can include RGB driver users.
So no underlying untold story. Just that the story did not have a preface I
suppose, or people are looking for a story which was not there.  8^|

I hope that everyone understands that EPSON piezo printing can not really
accommodate much more than 130% total inks - sometimes more is possible, and
often only less - the paper is critical. So maximum black is not created by
printing 100% black at the maximum position - lest the CMY transitions are
thrown off. You do not write Quad tables from black to white, rather from
white to black so you can eliminate as much dot as possible. This is not a
limitation, but just how it is done with quads through 4 channels. If you
can do this, you can under print black and see where it becomes darker than
printing it in full by itself. It takes a great deal of different
combinations and measuring, but it is possible to exceed the full black on
its own by multiplying the densities of the cyan position and the black
position. This is what CMYK drivers afford.

We have a number of projects in house which can print quads and could make
for really nifty products for those who want to produce their own quad
routines - but it would need an ink limiter on the GUI because the tendency
is for a user to load up the inks. It is surprising how little total ink is
needed and how little can actually be used before it pools and puddles. We
probably will always release profiled product for control. And if people
want to use different inks - it is easy enough to knock an ink off. So we do
not view the profiles as a way to limit others inks, but rather to
streamline the process for those who do not have time to experiment. We
never published any comments as far as I am aware that stated our software
would not work with MIS inks. MIS bumped off the original inks rather well.
We're trying to make the best inks, and as they get bumped off, we'll be
continuously developing better ones and someday we may get a moment to catch
our breath. Maybe we won't. This is competition and free market in USA!
Whew!

Now the EPSON driver may print 100% black with either a little or now I read
"no" undercolor. That is if either we did the workflow wrong or Sileesh did
not follow our process. If the customer did not do the Woolf process
correctly than this is going to be very alarming, that users experiment on
top of experiments. Stable workflow is essential to publishing predictable
longevity data (our ultimate goal).

I have not read all the posts in regard to the viewing of the web page. But
the concept of some untold story seemed to disturb me last night when users
on my list said things were becoming a controversy here because of it. I
realize that the BW list is made mostly of RGB process printers. Monday we
are going to see how the Randall flow works and I do not want anyone to
assume we are doing this to discredit these workflows. On the contrary. We
need to know which of our three PIezoTone black ink positions are suitable
for these processes and will try to determine a caution statement based on
looking at the popular workflows. Certainly if there are any processes
unpublished and in question - we will appreciate receiving them. We want to
support these RGB process authors. But we want to do so responsibly to their
users. I have not heard of anyone ever expressing that longevity might be
influenced by software.

However, longevity is not just based on inks and paper - but also software
process. And we are trying to become responsible in every way we know how.
Our intentions were not to stir up bad feelings but make people aware of
their needs when they choose our products. We did not used to have workflow
customers, or rather we did not have very many - just a sprinkling.
Apparently this has changed, and it requires us to change as a company to
accommodate new ways of using our inks.

When we made the PiezoTones we did not think that we needed a black position
which was as stable as the grays because our driver afforded the ability to
go towards greater dMAX and if the prints we're light abused they would fall
back to levels which were the norm. Also, no one yet has really released a
pure pigment black. Current black pigments are not dark enough for that. A
pure "pigmented" black means a dispersion - and the only dispersions are
non-pigment. So now we finally found a way to produce a pure pigment black
which is dark enough at printing, and which will end up at a higher dMax
after the competing pigmented blacks lose their 5% fade or 15% fades from
the dispersion (what colorants the pigments were dispersed in).

But not all people want this longevity - if there are greater levels of
Optical Density available. MIS, SUNDANCE and PiezoTone original black
positions do lose density. We want to give users choices and we will do so
by supplying fade data with our three black inks on Oct 30. The Museum Black
will of course be the best choice from us for RGB, but it may also be
possible to use the original black with some of the RGB process and we will
supply those on the new labels. Portfolio Black may be a better choice. This
is all we are trying to do.

So I hope I have given enough information so that the experiment used by
Shilesh which he "more or less" tried to duplicate our experiment is not
revealing of anything more, or some story. I do not think that we published
the Woolf process settings which we used on that web page though, and I am
unaware if there are many flavors of it. But this is the process which the
customer used - and she was the only person to have actually sent us prints
with fade and the way which she printed them. We were trying to eliminate
all possible things like environment and coatings and when we learned that
PiezographyBW wasn't used and that matched to others who had posted problems
too, well we naturally wanted to see how that could have any affect. And if
it did affect it, to devise a way to specify our products either for or not
for RGB workflow and non-PiezographyBW process. And that is the whole story.
It really is not very exciting unless you are intrigued by data gathering.
But that is the limit of the intrigue.

I think that there are always more than one way to accomplish the same goal.
I love it when anyone tries to build a better mouse trap, or who like myself
attempts to upset the apple cart! We prefer direct control of the inks
ourselves because this has always been our method. Just as long as the
prints look good - right? Who cares how its done. Now if it doesn't look
good, who cares how long it lasts, right? We have been moving these last few
months towards making them last real long - longer than ever. To bring wARM
stability in line with fade longevity - and the last thing in the world we
wanted to do was piss off a ton of RGB process users - and then make them
think we were dissing their workflow. If anyone felt that way - please
accept my apologies. We are all working for the same cause.

And in advance, I may not be able to read the replies - so please be so kind
as to :cc me if you need additional info at piezobw@... or if
you would like me to read your comments, or you would like a response from
me on BW list. In order to read BW list we would need to fold ours into it
so there was only one, and instead we are leaning towards putting our list
on a DISCUS PRO server which we have bought and now set up - so that the
topics and individual threads can be organized in folders and will allow us
to read what we need to while all users can discuss whatever topics they
choose in a more organized manner. If Digital Black and White would like to
join us on the server it could be as a separate entity and with the same
moderators. Then we would have time to read both lists because of the better
organization of the threads! Martin and Antonis contact me off list for a
sneak peak of our discussion software and if this would be of interest to
you.

There would not be advertising and this usually consumes about 40% of my
time, dismissing the add add to continue to a message. :(


Best regards,


Jon Cone
Piezography Brand Inks and Software
Cone Editions Press, Ltd.
InkjetMall