Digital BW, The Print

Regarding the term "Giclee:" The fuss is pretty silly. In colloquial French,
the word means "to ejaculate." Whoever coined the term for inkjet printing
obviously never checked his/her French beyond the dictionary definition. I
will still stick with term "carbon print."

Regarding the Jon/Inkjetmall debate my own personal view is that Jon has
tried honestly to bring good products to the marketplace. He has fallen
victim to the problems most very small (and some larger companies) have
which is the cost of testing and evaluation and the cost of customer
support. Where he has gone wrong is in not acknowledging problems until he
has a "solution." Up until that point his official party line seems to be to
ignore the existence of these problems. I suspect, that like most small
companies, Inkjetmall literally cannot afford to publicly acknowledge the
kinds of problems associated with the products - the loss of sales (and
"warranty" costs) could be catastrophic to the company.

I do believe that there should be a caveat somewhere on Inkjetmall's Website
explaining that these are highly specialized products requiring intensive
maintenance and support and outlining the potential for clogging problems,
etc. Their promotions do make it seem like Piezography is a pretty turn-key
solution. (It may be for some users who were lucky enough to have
non-clogging printers. I wonder how many of them there really are out there.
Inkjetmall claims that the dissatisfied base is a small fraction of the
total.)

Last, please help me understand how a "software" issue can relate to fading
and color shift problems for a monochrome ink.

Rick

I am currently printing a portfolio for a friend. She photographed nudes on
35 mm Tri-X. The PiezoTone prints look posterized in the midtones (like a
print that was not totally fixed) , the transitions from the midtones to the
darker skin tones are much too hard. Because I just started with PiezoTone I
thought it was my fault and checked everything again and again with no
improvements. But today I tried Woolfs workflow and the Epson driver. And
voila: the problems are solved although the highlights are not as dotfree as
with the Piezo driver (under a magnifier). But thats not a problem with
grainy negatives...

In my opinion the holy 21 step wedge test does not show the real problems
unless you are exclusively working with large format cameras and ASA 100
films or digital cameras. My assumption now is that the piezo driver has
difficulties with interpreting noisy pixels. And you all can proof this if
you use the 21 step wedge and add a small amount of noise that is more or
less in the range of a 35 mm 400 ASA film. Then the tonal transitions being
smooth when printing the step wedge straight become totally different. In
the range of 35% to 50% you can find posterization, from 50% to 60% there is
an artificial lumpy structure not related to the noise, from 65% to 70%
again some posterization, from 70% to 100% again a too noisy lumpy structure
(but less pronounced than in the 50 to 60% range). Making the same
experiment with the Epson driver and Woolfs workflow does not show this
phenomenon.

If it is the grain that disturbs the piezo driver interpretation of density
then this would explain why some people reported problems with posterization
and bad skin tones and others did not mention it at all although the product
is long enough in the market (btw: who tested fading before launching
PiezoTone?? Should have been noticed before as well.).

Any comments?

Peter Baumbach
Fine Art Photography Munich



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Peter,

as one whose main body of work is prints from 3200 bw  35mm film (Delta or 
TMZ), I have had no problems with grain and the piezo plug in with  the 
1160/old piezo inks.  However, I've seen profile mismatches with the 
1280/WT-PiezoTones using the old profiles.  That's another story - since 
ConeTech no longer supports the product or makes profiles for their inks, you 
have to search by trial and error to see if something fits your paper of choice.

I suspect, then, that there is a profile mismatch somewhere in your workflow. 
Perhaps when you scan you scan for a different gamma or  tone curve or for a 
monitor preview that requires funny adjustments of the image to print properly. 
Too many factors to get into. Just wanted to point out that you should consider 
the other stages in the workflow before you conclude that it's the grain.

Also: adding noise to a gray scale hardly approximates a scan of a grainy neg 
or proves anything about the grain in and of itself being the problem.

Antonis








> If it is the grain that disturbs the piezo driver interpretation of density
> then this would explain why some people reported problems with 
posterization

> and bad skin tones and others did not mention it at all although the product
> is long enough in the market (btw: who tested fading before launching
> PiezoTone?? Should have been noticed before as well.).
> 
> Any comments?
> 
> Peter Baumbach
> Fine Art Photography Munich

Antonis,

you wrote:
> >> as one whose main body of work is prints from 3200 bw  35mm film (Delta
or
TMZ), I have had no problems with grain and the piezo plug in with  the
1160/old piezo inks.  However, I've seen profile mismatches with the
1280/WT-PiezoTones using the old profiles.  That's another story - since
ConeTech no longer supports the product or makes profiles for their inks,
you
have to search by trial and error to see if something fits your paper of
choice.
<<<

I forgot to mention that I am using the 1160 with EAM for testing and
Photorag. I tried several profiles and what I could see is that some of them
show one or more discontinuties in the wedge, others are quite similar to
the one I am using (EAM on EAM) but the posterization in the midtones of my
prints remains. If it is a profile mismatch and you say that Cone is no
longer supporting the product for what have I and others paid? And the
profile "works" with the original step wedge but not with the noisy one. A
profile mismatch is something fundamental and should not work in both cases.

you wrote:
>>>  I suspect, then, that there is a profile mismatch somewhere in your
workflow.
Perhaps when you scan you scan for a different gamma or  tone curve or for a
monitor preview that requires funny adjustments of the image to print
properly.
Too many factors to get into. Just wanted to point out that you should
consider
the other stages in the workflow before you conclude that it's the grain.
<<<

I adjusted the monitor preview according to the 21 step wedge. My data for
the gray workspace in PS are: in 10, out 18; in 90 out 97. Is that a funny
adjustment?

The printed 21 steps have densities: 0,00 0,04 0,08 0,12 0,17 0,22 0,28 0,34
0,38 0,46 0,53 0,61 0,70 0,79 0,87 0,97 1,09 1,21 1,34 1,46 and 1,60 on EAM.
Are these values in the normal range?


you wrote:
>>>  Also: adding noise to a gray scale hardly approximates a scan of a
grainy neg
or proves anything about the grain in and of itself being the problem.
<<<
It prooves how the system behaves under noisy conditions. If the driver is
very accurate but not too accurate to be able to resolve the grain fully it
could be a interference problem or moire problem between the grain "grid"
and the raster processing (during scanning a similar problem occurs). With
the 3500 ASA films you used this problem may not occur because the grain is
coarse enough to be resolved by the printer driver. All I say is that the
Epson driver has no problems with my scanned negatives and the step wedge
whereas the piezo driver shows a pretty abnornal density variation. And the
finding in the step wedge is exactly what I see in my prints. The 21 step
wedge has not been scanned by me. It is the original file plus the noise
filter. No gamma adjustment.


Peter


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Peter,

I'm sorry to hear that you have had continued problems with these grainy
negs. I believe what you are seeing may be the result of sampling 'errors'
or 'harmonics' or 'noise' that are (in my understanding) not possible to
avoid in a digital sampling system. It just may be the case that the Epson
driver's reputed 360dpi sampling may be avoiding something that the reputed
720dpi sampling of Piezography is picking up... not to mention the many
varied ways that sampling of the image data can be achieved.

You are correct to say that the 21-step image would not show problems that
may show up with a grainy negative, but in my view it is not particularly
intended for that; it is intended to check that the ink is being laid down
correctly by the printer... and you can tell a lot from that print if
something is wrong, be it banding, failed nozzles, ink in incorrect
positions, etc.

Back on 12th May, I posted a message to the Digital BW group that to my
knowledge went unanswered... 'Scans and Grain and Output options'... that
raised exactly this issue; that perhaps conceptually there is an optimal
size for grainy images to be reproduced (in my little world anyway). I can
certainly confirm that I have had some excellent grainy output from
Piezography but I would imagine that if it were too small relative to the
scan it would fail, and prints would start to look muddy.  In that email, I
asked if anyone had seen anything similar in the traditional darkroom; or
put another way, if in the traditional darkroom an image from a grainy neg
would look good at some enlargements but not at others... this would not be
due to sampling errors per se but silver chemistry and human optics.  This
is also 'just the same as' testing the output from a sharpening operation
_at_final_print_size_, rather than in smaller test prints. If only we could
change our film-grain just before selecting our final print size??!???

So, in summary, I suggest that you try different print sizes for your image.
Perhaps noise and grain is where the normal 'scan at highest optical
resolution, resize image without resampling, and let the dpi fall where it
may' [normally recommended for Piezography users] falls down. Certainly it
is relatively easy to see how Photoshop resize operations can dramatically
effect the feel of a noisy image by selecting different methods; especially
if you resample smaller.

You could be right that noise / grain could be effecting the way that people
see their prints, e.g. skin-tones as you note... but again... the 21-step
wedge is a good place to start to check that the printer is laying down ink
properly.

Best regards,
Nij

  -----Original Message-----
  From: Peter Baumbach [mailto:info@...]
  Sent: 26 September 2002 01:39
  To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
  Cc: Nij; piezobw@...
  Subject: Grain drives PiezoTone mad


  I am currently printing a portfolio for a friend. She photographed nudes
on 35 mm Tri-X. The PiezoTone prints look posterized in the midtones (like a
print that was not totally fixed) , the transitions from the midtones to the
darker skin tones are much too hard. Because I just started with PiezoTone I
thought it was my fault and checked everything again and again with no
improvements. But today I tried Woolfs workflow and the Epson driver. And
voila: the problems are solved although the highlights are not as dotfree as
with the Piezo driver (under a magnifier). But thats not a problem with
grainy negatives...

  In my opinion the holy 21 step wedge test does not show the real problems
unless you are exclusively working with large format cameras and ASA 100
films or digital cameras. My assumption now is that the piezo driver has
difficulties with interpreting noisy pixels. And you all can proof this if
you use the 21 step wedge and add a small amount of noise that is more or
less in the range of a 35 mm 400 ASA film. Then the tonal transitions being
smooth when printing the step wedge straight become totally different. In
the range of 35% to 50% you can find posterization, from 50% to 60% there is
an artificial lumpy structure not related to the noise, from 65% to 70%
again some posterization, from 70% to 100% again a too noisy lumpy structure
(but less pronounced than in the 50 to 60% range). Making the same
experiment with the Epson driver and Woolfs workflow does not show this
phenomenon.

  If it is the grain that disturbs the piezo driver interpretation of
density then this would explain why some people reported problems with
posterization and bad skin tones and others did not mention it at all
although the product is long enough in the market (btw: who tested fading
before launching PiezoTone?? Should have been noticed before as well.).

  Any comments?

  Peter Baumbach
  Fine Art Photography Munich



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]