Digital BW, The Print

Those who have been following the "more to the story" threads may 
know that it was originally from an experiment posted on the 
Piezography website (see message 21633 for the link).  The posted 
images were of great interest to the Epson driver user like me (on a 
1280), and I did my own experiment.  But the the images on the Piezo 
site continue to bug me.

The experiment I did was a major-eye opener.  Cone says: "Curiously, 
the darkest position (cyan) is used to print the lightest tones and 
yellow position is used to underprint the black ink which is the 
predominant ink in the midtones and darker."  Whether, it is a 6 
color printer I used or a 4 color printer that Cone used in his post, 
the Epson driver DOES NOT use only cyan ink in the highlights. 
Rather, it seems to use ALL color inks (makes sense).  How do I know 
that about Cone's 4 color printer?  Well, look at the Cone images: 
The only place where you see pure cyan ink is the 100% to ~ 70%  of 
the Piezo print. What you see there in the Piezo print IS the true 
cyan color of that printer, as alluded to by Cone.  But that is NOT 
the color (density or hue) you see in ANY part of the Epson driver 
print!  So other inks are being used, and I am guessing all inks are 
being used.  What does that mean?  Does the fact that the Epson 
driver uses more inks than the Piezo driver for any given tone make a 
difference in the final output?  That is the question.  Will one of 
these drivers produce smoother gradients?  Less textured dither?

More to come, as I do more experiemnts....

Best wishes

Shilesh
May your gradients be smooth

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Shilesh Jani"
<shilesh.jani@s...> wrote:
> Those who have been following the "more to the story" threads may 
> know that it was originally from an experiment posted on the 
> Piezography website (see message 21633 for the link).  The posted 
> images were of great interest to the Epson driver user like me (on a 
> 1280), and I did my own experiment.  But the the images on the Piezo 
> site continue to bug me.
> 
> The experiment I did was a major-eye opener.  Cone says: "Curiously, 
> the darkest position (cyan) is used to print the lightest tones and 
> yellow position is used to underprint the black ink which is the 
> predominant ink in the midtones and darker."  Whether, it is a 6 
> color printer I used or a 4 color printer that Cone used in his
post, 
> the Epson driver DOES NOT use only cyan ink in the highlights. 
> Rather, it seems to use ALL color inks (makes sense). 

If you are printing color inks to make a B&W image, perhaps it does.
It does *not* make sense when printing B&W quad tone inks, at least it
doesn't make sense to me. That's why I personally am worried about
ImagePrint 5.0.

> How do I know 
> that about Cone's 4 color printer?  Well, look at the Cone images: 
> The only place where you see pure cyan ink is the 100% to ~ 70%  of 
> the Piezo print. What you see there in the Piezo print IS the true 
> cyan color of that printer, as alluded to by Cone.  But that is NOT 
> the color (density or hue) you see in ANY part of the Epson driver 
> print!  So other inks are being used, and I am guessing all inks are 
> being used.  What does that mean?  Does the fact that the Epson 
> driver uses more inks than the Piezo driver for any given tone make
a 
> difference in the final output? 

I think it does. I think using more ink than is necessary to produce a
tone is detrimental to the look of the print. It's certainly
detrimental to my wallet.

> That is the question.  Will one of 
> these drivers produce smoother gradients?  Less textured dither?
> 

Yes. IMHO, the Piezography driver (plugin and stand alone RIP) is the
best RIP on the market, and it makes the best prints on the market,
expecially when used with the Piezotone inks. The transitions are
extraordinarily smooth, and the highlights are as dotless as Mr. Cone
says they are, at least to my eyes.

> More to come, as I do more experiemnts....
> 

By all means, do experiments. "Why guess when you can know?" Run some
prints through Piezography software and see for yourself. In the end,
the only person who has to be convinced is the artist who is printing.

> Best wishes
> 
> Shilesh
> May your gradients be smooth

on 10/15/02 2:31 PM, "Shilesh Jani" <shilesh.jani@...> wrote:

> What you see there in the Piezo print IS the true
> cyan color of that printer, as alluded to by Cone.  But that is NOT
> the color (density or hue) you see in ANY part of the Epson driver
> print!  So other inks are being used, and I am guessing all inks are
> being used.  What does that mean?  Does the fact that the Epson
> driver uses more inks than the Piezo driver for any given tone make a
> difference in the final output?  That is the question.  Will one of
> these drivers produce smoother gradients?  Less textured dither?

Quads done in the old school CMYK style are not necessarily the "right" way
- it is just one way. Driving inks through a CMYK driver does not actually
need to be done via overlapping bell shaped curves either. It is just one
way that is easy to control and create tables for presets. There may be
other ways which are just as or more effective. Perhaps there is a way to
"save" ink or a way to allow for better compatibility with slightly
irregular printers.

It is striking how such different processes like tweaked RGB and controlled
CMYK can end up looking so similar as final prints, yet be done so
differently in their architecture.

Definitely there is something worth exploring with a CMYK driver using some
of this RGB tweak process. We might parse the output from an EPSON driver
using these RGB tweaks to see how it is handling the black and the cyan and
see if we can pick up something useful for the next version of
PiezographyBW.


--------------------------------
may your highlights be dotless
and your tonal scale smooth,


Jon Cone
jon@...
Piezography(tm) brand software and inks
http://www.piezography.com
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