Digital BW, The Print

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tim Atherton [mailto:timatherton@...]
> Sent: Monday, August 25, 2003 10:01 AM
> To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [Digital BW] Septone system
>
>
> So have I got this right?
>
> The Septone system is basically a seven ink (warm/cool) descendant of the
> old Piezography system? With a driver for the Epson 2200 and a set of ink
> cartridges (if you so choose) you can switch back and forth with between
> Septone and say, original OEM Epson Ultrachrome colour?
>
Tim,

The Septone inks and software for the 2200 are made by Sundance Inks and R9
Software the developers and the manufacturers of the original Piezo inks and
the Piezo plugin. These are a new formula of inks that were corrected to
eliminate the original problems of the original inks. I gather they are
similar to the Piezotones and MIS-FN chemically. They did RIT testing and
they are predicting a display life of over 100 years at 450 lux 12 hours per
day for what that is worth.

The Septone system includes a neutral black ink, 3 warm gray inks and 3 cool
gray inks. There is no color ink used. The software is an advanced version
of the Piezo/R9 plug-in which allows you to control the ratio of warm to
cool gray inks in the three major tonal areas of the print. Shadows, mid
tones and high lights. With sliders you can set the shadows to say 75/25
W/C, the mid tones 50/50 and the highlights 72/28 all in 1% increments!
Mathematically that works out to 1,000,000 combinations. From the samples I
have this gives you a really incredible ranges of hues that you can achieve
in a print.

If you look at silver fiber prints you will find that the hue of the print
varies with tone. So you have prints with say subtly cool shadows and warm
highlights. I think this chromatic complexity results in a print that is
much richer looking since the variation in hue allows the human eye to more
easily differentiate adjacent tones. I have been using Selenium Piezotone
ink because it has a good deal of this going on. The ability to vary this
effect is very appealing. This is essentially the new version of the old
plug-in software.

Check out their website at:

http://www.bwguys.com/

They will not appreciate me saying this but since the ink densities of the
two gray sets are the same as the Piezotone and the MIS-FS ink sets I have
to wonder if the software will not work with these gray inks as well. Say
Warm Neutral and Selenium Piezotone grays or MIS-FS and FSN?

I also wonder if Roy could not add this ability to QuadTone RIP. You would
just need more curves that only effected narrow tonal ranges.

You could certainly switch back and forth between the Septone and UC
cartridges but from the experiences people have had in the past this is
extremely wasteful of ink. If you did this on a regular basis I suspect that
the cost of your ink losses might pay for a second 2200 in time.

Martin Wesley
http://www.borderless-photos.de/guests.html