Piezo Pro, 7000 and ImagePrint 5, 7600 for B&W.
2002-09-26 by qdfb
Antonis suggested I post my updated views on comparisons I have undertaken recently of B&W output from an Epson 7000 run by Piezography Pro (the so called R9 software), with Selenium Tone inks, and an Epson 7600, matte black ink, run by ImagePrint 5. Finally, I'll comment briefly on the 7000 / Selenium run by ImagePrint 5. I deliberately use the word "views", not "findings" because this is not a scientific experiment. It is, inevitably, in large part subjective. Your mileage, as they say, may vary. If Antonis thinks it useful, I may add the images I used for this test to the files section of the list so you can see what I am talking about below. One image, the church image, has a lot of information in the 95-99% range, but hardly any at 100%. It is a good test of shadow detail. The other image, from the Olympic stadium in Barcelona, is sharp but a bit grainy, with some deep shadows and blown out highlights. Both are 360 dpi. Prints were made on Photo Rag 308gsm Chruch Print - Piezo I have some issues with Piezo / Selenium inks. There is some subtle microbanding I cannot shift. Others have reported this on the two piezo lists, and it seems to be a problem associated with the change from the old "Sundance" inks to the new PiezoTone inks. This has been a driver behind my personal search for a viable alternative. I continue to be amazed at how well Piezo seperates tones in the 95- 100% region. I'd argue it looks almost too open. There seems to have been some contrast loss with the new inks, but they exhibit incredible tonality. There is no sootiness, and you can see in to the shadows. There are no visible dots under an 8x loup, but if you *really* look closely, you can just see the "tartan" weave pattern. Frankly, this is irrelevant, as the surface texture of Photo Rag is more obvious at this magnification. If only the microbanding would shift, this would be one near perfect print. Chruch Print - ImagePrint / 7600 The original shot was taken on a Bronica GS 1 6x7 camera, Agfa APX 25, developed in Rodinal, I used a profile kindly supplied by John Pannozzo this week specifically for Photo Rag and Matte ink. Print made at 1440, 8-pass. The first point to make is that we are looking at a totally neutral B&W print. There are no croosover effects - no way to tell this was not made with a quadtone inkset. Metamerism is also almost bansihed. This, I am told, is because ImagePrint does not use the yellow ink. Whatever, it works :-) It is immediately noticeable that there is more contrast in this print. It also looks slightly sharper, possibly a result of the greater contrast, but I wonder also if the way ink is laid down is a factor, or whether the smaller dot size / resolution improvement with the 7600 is in evidence. There are no dots visible to the naked eye. Under an 8x loup, you can just make out the individual colour dyes laid down by the 7600 in lighter tone areas. Not the slightest chance you'd see this without a powerful loup - the print looks totally dotless - and even with a loup, the dots are far from obvious. They are a little more obvious under the loup if you chose 4 instead of 8 pass at 1440. The shadows are well seperated with ImagePrint, but not quite as much shadow info is visible at around the 96-98% mark as with Piezo. it is a matter of taste which is "better". I do think, however, that it is more obvious where the matte black in kicks in. I might experiment with ink limiting as I think this would improve matters. Nij Rheam and I have speculated whether the ImagePrint Gamma 2.2 prints just a tad too dark. Stadium Print - Piezo A more contrasty subject, shot on a Mamiya 7II with Agfa 100 and developed in Rodinal for a high acutance negative. Piezo seems to have smoother the film grain somehow. Print looks good: similar comments to the Church image. Stadium Print - ImagePrint I used the tint picker with this, set at 1,1 to max out on the blue. However, because it prints slightly warm on Photo Rag, the print is just pleasingly slightly cool. Imageprint faithfully renders the grain. I'm not sure if Piezo has some smoothing trick built in to the software, but something odd is going on here. I slightly prefer the ImagePrint print, even though the Piezo print has fractionally more shadow detail. The extra punch from the Imageprint print, coupled with the tint, works for me. The Piezo black is, though, a tad more dense than the Ultrachrome matte. I tried a print with a Piezo ink profile through ImagePrint (using a special ImagePrint profile for the 7000) to the 7000 and the extra density of the Piezo Black is repeated, so it has nothing to do with the driver used. The print done with ImagePrint through Piezo looks very similar (but with the denser black) to the ImagePrint print through the 7600. It may not be quite as good. Is there a winner? Let me put it like this. On the evidence of the prints I have so far done, ImagePrint 5 is a viable, very high quality alternative to Piezo Pro, with the benifit of the tint picker, support in new profiles from ColorByte, and no banding problems. Personally, I really like the tint picker. It imparts a quite subtle tone to the image. When it works, Piezo Pro is superb, and may just have the edge in ultimate quality, in my view, but you are limited to the tone of the inkset you have chosen, and at the moment its future is unclear. One final comment: ImagePrint prints better B&W thought the 7600, in my view, than through the 7000. So - no winner, just choices. Quentin