Digital BW, The Print

> > I'm quite certain it is, in fact, a blended inkset containing
> > some carbon and a fair amount of color pigments.


Yes, I think you are right they are carbon mixed with other pigments, probably
other black pigments, however it's not easy to know what else is in there .
They're certainly not going to tell us. Jon is saying that carbon can be
altered on the molecular level to create other than sepia results as well. Now
this WAY out of my league in knowledge to have any idea what he is talking
about. Hp has designed the entire Vivera set to all fade equally, which is no
mean feat if it's totally true. So, toned and neutral prints all fade the same,
theoretically. That, along with the neutral gray is way beyond Epson and Canon.

By Vivera not using composite color for monochrome I meant you are printing all
values with the same "gray" ink, not mixing bits of cyan and light magenta and
yellow on the fly from other inks, in other parts of the tonal scale in
different amounts, like say Epson ABW does. That's bad in my opinion. And, I've
never ever believed that mixing inks in a solution and mixing them out of the
nozzles on the paper equates to the same thing. But we've debated this to death
over the years.
> >
> > ... As a blend of color and carbon, it's an open question
> > whether it's more lightfast than the MIS and Cone B&W inks.

I always assumed Piezography and the MIS sets that use only carbon would
outperform Vivera, maybe by a lot, and with 4, 6, or 7 shades instead of 3 they
are more subtle in high values, absolutely. I've done a lot of side by side
tests and Vivera has a deeper black but Piezography K7 is much more 3
dimensional and delicate all over. Sometimes it's image dependent. But your
right, that is exactly why we need someone like Aardenburg to actually have
impartial evidence by someone who is not on the payroll of any of the companies.
>
>
> We do, in fact, have some preliminary evidence of how the HP Vivera inks do
compared to Jon's Piezotones -- and Jon wins.


I saw that. Piezography carbon is still NOT showing signs of fading last time I
looked on that site. It is going to take awhile to even measure any fade at all.
That is Carbon PIezo Black, not Portfolio Black which has dye in it and has
already shown a weakness, and despite it's beautiful dmax, I'm still afraid to
use it.


The Vivera MK is giving a dmax of 1.8 on Photorag and 2.45 on gloss, but
despite its really good stability, I wouldn't expect it to be in the longevity
class of pure carbon like K7, which I totally love and use as my primary mono
insets. The Vivera print color is really closer to selenium on Photorag, but
neutral on most of the gloss fiber papers like Photorag Baryta. But, you can
tone it if you want to. I normally don't.


> So, folks, pony up the Aardenburg membership dues so you can get into the
database and see how the third party inks are doing. It's independent tests
like this that might help keep our suppliers in business -- which is very
important to the B&W market.


Oh man you said it! Everybody on this list needs to join now. Someone needs to
get this man a grant. He totally deserves it and is invaluable to the entire
serious global black and white community.


John

www.deanimaging.com