Digital BW, The Print

>Could you guys tell us a little more about icefields? What it does and
>any pros/cons.
>thanks,
>
>mikeH

Mike,

You are more or less asking for the history of producing Quad tone 
prints from an ink jet printer.

To be very, very brief......

Every discussion that takes place here is a repeat of topics that 
appeared on the Epson / Leben List over two years ago. At that time 
two printers were in use, the 3000 and for those that could not 
afford that the Photo Ex. The only things that have changed are the 
ink sets and papers. The problems still exist. Many of the problems 
were solved by the introduction of Piezography with its plug and play 
capabilities.

Dan Culbertson and Tyler Boley were producing workflows for the 3000 
using MIS Quad tone inks on papers such as Somerset Velvet. A lot of 
people were applying those workflows to the Photo Ex. It must be said 
that the prints produced were quite acceptable.

In tandem with Dan and Tyler, people like Dan Burkholder and Strange 
Ross were developing work flows for more specific uses. Strange Ross 
, http://axp.psi.ku.dk/~ross/  , for his Photogravure and Dan 
Burkholder,  http://www.danburkholder.com  , for enlarged negatives 
for Platinum printing.

Icefields is a software RIP that converts grayscale images into 
stochastic, random dot, images. At that time it was thought Icefields 
might do what the Piezography software does today. However, Jon Cone 
hinted he was planning to introduce a system that would answer all 
our prayers, Piezography was born and Icefields  placed on the shelf.

At the risk of driving you into the depths of paranoia, one of the 
problems that will never be solved is the inconsistency between 
batches of paper. No paper mill can guarantee that the next batch of 
the same paper will be identical to the last. So, all the time spent 
tweaking curves for your currant supply of paper and ink may have to 
be repeated when you re-order. This may be one of the reasons why 
some people are getting poor results with curves that work for 
others. Hence, the hunt for a plug and play solution that would allow 
us to just get on with making prints instead of playing with 
technology.

To describe Icefield in detail would mean plagiarizing Dan 
Burkholder´s book and I don´t think that would be right. Anyway, from 
Tyler´s post it looks like Icefield has been updated, perhaps he has 
more information about that.

Regards,

Jerry.