Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., jobnl@e... wrote:
> Martin,
> Comparing Lyson and Piezo before the fading test:
> - The Lyson has a richer black. I like that very much.
> - However the Lyson does not have the superfine "dotsctructure" 
> that the Piezo print shows. Fine detail is much better on the 
> Piezo.

Jo,

Do you happen to know what printer/driver combination was used for 
the Lyson print?

> If you compare the prints from a distance, the Lyson looks better 
> because of the richer black. At closer inspection the Piezo is the 
> winner because of the better fine detail. 
> My personal impression, after everything I have seen and read 
> about this subject , is that the dyes in the Lyson inks are 
> responsible for the richer blacks but at the same time for the 
> dramatic fading behaviour. (Unacceptible for me).

Do you see any value to the Lyson inks for short life commercial work?

> The pigments 
> in the Piezo seem to be responsible for the better longevity of 
> that system. John Cone has stated that a very small amount of 
> dye has been added to the pigments. I think that small amount 
> explains the slight degree of fading of the Piezo print and the 
fact 
> that the slightly "greenish" look in the highlights and midtones 
> disappears after such a long exposure in the sun.
> 
> There is still one thing that I do not understand:
> Whynot is the Pizeo process designed in such a way that in a 
> 100% black they use an overlay of all 4 inks.?
> That is the way a duotone or tritone process in offset-printing 
> works to achieve rich blacks and animproved tonescale.
> As I understand from the examples on John Cones site, each of 
> the four Piezo BW iks now are used just for a part of  greyscale. 
> If in a 100% black all 4 tones would be present as a solid area, 
> that would increase Dmax.of the Piezo process.

I would agree with you that this is true in offset lithography but 
they are using dye-based inks, which add together to increase 
density. With the pigmented inks I don't think that this is 
necessarily true.

Try this. Create a new blank file in Photoshop. Draw a 1" to 2" to 
one side and fill it with 100% black. Now print the file using the 
Epson driver. In the driver choose "Black" rather than color so that 
only the ink in the black cartridge will be used. Print this out.

Now move the black square to the other side of the file space and 
export the image to the Piezo driver and print using an appropriate 
profile.

If you take a look at the result, the black ink only square is a bit 
darker than square using the Piezo driver. tI looks to me that Piezo 
does run one or more of the other inks into the pure black area but 
this results in a lower Dmax. I is as if the pigment in the other 
inks are lighter and the resulting mix is then lighter than pure 
black.

Martin

P.S. Wonderful website by the way and many, many beautiful B&W 
images. I took the liberty of adding your homepage to the "Bookmarks" 
section of the group's homepage under "Photographers"

(snip)