Digital BW, The Print

I am thinking of jumping into inkjet printing, and am having trouble 
deciding between Piezo and MIS methods.  I understand that 
Piezography is supposed to have a driver which makes a substantial 
difference in printing.  Is this so?  I saw this link:
http://www.piezography.com/piezographyBW-comp-mis.html
but, don't know if it is a fair comparison.

Can anyone give me advice?  I have set aside about $1400 for an 
inkjet printing system, and want to make sure I get the most bang for 
my buck!

I go with Martin's advice on the printer and driver. You may want to 
wait on the CIS system (for the 1280 which has a chip on the carts, 
you definitely want the nomorecarts flavor available from the sources 
he lists plus InkJetArt.com) so you can try both the piezo driver 
with FS ink or switch out to MIS VM ink with Paul's curves.

To me the difference is that the piezo is much more cookie 
cutter...it has all the profiles for papers and pretty basic settings 
that always produce something I like. With Paul's curves, you have a 
lot more control...even though it isn't as easy to be totally 
consistent, you can really make EXACTLY the print you want.

The other feature that endears me to the piezo driver is that it uses 
the photoshop export module which prints 2x to 3x faster than the 
Epson driver.

The chipped cart on the 1280 does allow you to switch carts, but you 
probably want to stay with extremely compatible inks (FS and VM would 
fit this definition). You really don't want to switch back and forth 
more than you have to, though, because you introduce more possible 
glitches like air bubbles etc. Once you have the CIS installed, 
changing inks is a significantly bigger job. 

Try some carts and then settle on one setup as a commitment of the 
printer would be my advice.

Tom O'Connell

TomOC@...
www.thomasoconnell.com


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "dilcher" <dilcher@y...> 
wrote:
> I am thinking of jumping into inkjet printing, and am having 
trouble 
> deciding between Piezo and MIS methods.  I understand that 
> Piezography is supposed to have a driver which makes a substantial 
> difference in printing.  Is this so?  I saw this link:
> http://www.piezography.com/piezographyBW-comp-mis.html
> but, don't know if it is a fair comparison.
> 
> Can anyone give me advice?  I have set aside about $1400 for an 
> inkjet printing system, and want to make sure I get the most bang 
for 
> my buck!

I recently set up a 1280 with a CIS/Piezo system.

While it prints  well, it is much slower than my 1160.

Am I correct in deducing that the "Best Quality" Piezo setting makes 
the 1280 print at 2880 dpi regardless of the Epson dialog settings? 
Or is this just a 6 ink vs. 4 ink thing?
--

> dilcher [mailto:dilcher@...] wrote:
> 
>> ... having trouble  deciding between Piezo and MIS
methods.
>> ...Piezography is supposed to have a driver which
makes a substantial
>> difference in printing.  Is this so?
> 
> You will get a variety of opinions on this, I'm
sure.  Mine is that the
> Piezo driver does, in fact, make smoother prints on
older quad printers, but
> not on newer hextone printers.  Nonetheless, while I
have the Piezo driver
> and the older quad printers, I still prefer the
Epson driver.  The
> differences in smoothness are not enough to be
relevant to my decision.


I have used both the Piezography driver and the
various MIS workflows. For me, the greatest difference
is the superior tonal separation of Piezography in the
shadows regions. Not yet have any of the alternative
methods been able to equal the separation of tone in
the shadows regions.

However this may not be of importance according to
your level of quality expectation. I have found
several Piezographers who prefer to have the shadows
regions appear all black. My preference is to go
beyond that of the silver print in tonal fidelity of
shadows. Piezography does this and it is a quality
that I prefer. Also - there is a better highlights
definition.

Like I have mentioned some photographers do not have
the same corresponding judgment of quality criteria. I
argue that Piezography is able to produce a level
above the silver print. They argue that getting close
to a silver print is all that is necessary of inkjet.
I am certain that my printing is of a higher concept
than theirs. For me it matters.

-della 



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