Digital BW, The Print

Nij,

Actually John Woolf's statement isn't quite that strong and presents 
what appears to be an honest opinion about the two. You can find it 
at:

http://www.inksupply.com/index.cfm?source=html/woolf_comment.html

His workflow is for the MIS Full Spectrum set for the 3000 and 1160 
and is still on the MIS site. This is the set people are also using 
with the Piezo driver.

Both ConeTech and MIS could greatly benefit from an overhaul of their 
websites BTW. Finding things on either of them is extremely 
problematic. (I know a really, really great site designer if anybody 
needs one. :)

To my mind the value of the MIS VM set is not that I will produce 
prints in multiple tones but that I will get the one tone I want to 
use for all my prints. I am extremely sensitive to print color. This 
is NOT a blessing. It is a curse and is an issue for me in silver 
printing as well as inkjet.

I see three forces at work on the quad ink set situation over the 
next few months. The MIS VM will get much easier to use on a wide 
range of printers due to a lot of activity in producing more curves 
that will put users in a position to simply use standard Photoshop 
tools to get the results they want. Secondly, ConeTech will release 
the "Selenium" ink set which will remove some of the drive to seek 
elsewhere for those who are not satisfied with the color of the 
current Piezo inks. Cost is still a factor here and if MIS releases a 
hex version of the Full Spectrum that will add another wrinkle.

Finally the arrival of the Epson C80 ($179 - $30 rebate) with the 
DuraBrite pigmented inks (advertised print life 70 years) and 
individual CMYK cartridges is a forerunner of the next generation of 
Epson printers which may shortly spawn a replacement for the 1280 and 
1290. I realize the technical challenges but ConeTech may finally 
release Piezo for the 1280 only a few months before it disappears 
from production. I would say that the odds are good that the new C80 
generation has different chips on the cartridges so Epson will be 
really motivated to replace the 1280 now that 3rd party chipped 
cartridges are out.

In any case the whole area is likely to remain in flux for the 
foreseeable future. Then there are the rumors of the Epson grayscale 
printer and the RGBCMYKk printers....

We live in interesting times.

Martin




--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Nij" <nigel@m...> wrote:
> I believe you may be thinking of John Woolf saying something about
> 'preferring the qualities of the Epson driver'. To my mind this is 
akin to
> saying "I invented a system which is great and the best system, 
yes, better
> than other systems". Equally, I suspect things (printers) have 
moved on a
> little since Inkjetmall did a comparison between MIS and 
Piezograpy... in
> that non-Piezo quad-workflows and curves will benefit from smaller 
dots that
> the Piezo program does not particularly (to my knowledge).
> 
> I suspect John Woolf prefers his workflow because he presumably 
developed it
> for himself, and at some stage he was kind enough to publish it. I 
found it
> interesting that there was no longer a link to his workflow on the 
MIS site
> (unless I missed it - I do apologise if this is so). Whichever way, 
I
> imagine a quad approach that involves curves in the manner of MIS 
workflows
> _will_ give you massive flexibility, but probably also a great deal 
of
> opportunity to screw things up, or get caught up in artistic 
expression at
> the print-curve stage, or...   There are some people out there that 
are
> having GREAT success with them, but others are not, it would seem, 
even
> using the exact same set of curves. I have heard that some find 
that even a
> curve that 'works' will not necessarily work for all images. In 
this regard,
> Piezography seems to have a very good 'hit ratio' - you should be 
able to
> print what you see on-screen... with no dots :)
> 
> For me personally, Piezography has been a way to click 'Print' and 
get a
> great picture very quickly... For me, I have little enough time to
> concentrate on image-making. Piezo is therefore right up my street! 
I am
> interested in alternatives, but so far they are sitting in bottles 
and
> waiting for a time when I can reasonably dedicate 'quite some time' 
to some
> trials and errors and so on. In the end, time may be a factor that 
keeps me
> solely, and happily, with Piezo... even though I do like the sound
> _personally_ of the Variable Mix advocated / developed by Paul 
Roark.
> 
> Disclosure: I am a Cone reseller :)
> 
> Nij
> 
(snip)