Septone inks and PixelPixasso RIP
2003-02-24 by Martin Wesley
A week ago I received a set of five ~6x9" prints, printed on the same long strip of Photo Rag by a 7600 using a new set of inks from Sundance and software by R9. These are the two companies responsible for developing the original Piezo inks and software plugin. There was an information sheet with the prints explaining how the system worked. I also exchanged a couple of e-mails with Gary Rogers of R9 and got the chance to talk to him by phone. The Septone inks are a set of a neutral black with three neutral-warm gray inks and three neutral-cool gray inks. These are designed for use in the new 7-ink Epson printers. Specifically the 2200, 7600 and 9600 printers. The PixelPixasso RIP allows the user to determine the blend of the gray inks in the high, mid and low tones of the grayscale image. First a paper profile is selected and then three sliders allow you to set the ink blend for each tonal range in 1% increments. The five prints I received include one print made with 100% NC in all three ranges, one with 100% NW in all three, one with 50/50% NW/NC in all ranges, one set to 100% NC in the highlights, 25/75% NC/NW in the mid tones and 100% NW warm in the low or shadow tones, the fifth print was set to 100% NW in the highlights, 25/75% NW/NC in the mid tones and 100% NC warm in the low tones. The prints are of a wonderful image of a single fully opened rose blossom taken by Ken Niles. It is a full range image with gentle tonal graduations in all areas of the tone scale. The hue of the prints is very nice in all the examples. I lean more to the warm side of neutral but the cool will appeal to many. The 100% cool is about as cool as MIS-FN, not quite as cool as you could get from MIS-VM using a "cold" curve. The warm print falls somewhere in-between Warm Neutral PiezoTone and Carbon Sepia PiezoTone. A little more reddish than MIS-FS or MIS-VM with a "warm" curve. Not as red as MIS-VM Sepia. None of the prints show any sign of metamerism under tungsten, quartz-halogen, fluorescent or day light. Nor do I see even the slightest hint of olive or yellow-green that I see prints made with the original Sundance/Piezo inks. Unfortunately there were no step-wedges included but hunting around the prints with an X-Rite 811 densitometer I measured Dmax values in the 1.71 to 1.74 range. These were consistent throughout the five prints and are comparable to MIS-FS black and PiezoTone Portfolio Black. The really fascinating thing is that the tonal balance across all five prints is identical. The highlights don't blow out or the shadows don't get muddy as the ratio of the two gray sets is adjusted. As Gary explained the software takes into account the varying ink densities and make compensations on the fly to keep the over all balance. Simply put what you have here is all the advantages of the tonal variation of MIS-VM with finer control combined with the tonal accuracy and ease of use of the R9/Piezo plug-in. They are side stepping the inherent problems of using a toner gray and RGB separation curves to "trick" the Epson driver and address the printer directly. Based on the samples and the description, without actually have had a chance to try it myself, it looks like a wonderful plug-and-play B&W solution for the 7-ink printers. For those of you who need it, PixelPixasso is also a color RIP and is sold on a "one license per CPU" basis so you can use the RIP to control a dedicated B&W printer and a separate color printer as well. Can't tell you anything about the color potential though. Please note that the inks used are not the original Piezo/Sundance inks. The NC grays are the current Sundance NC and the NW is a yet to be released ink set using the same chemistry as the NC. Gary says these inks do not suffer the clogging issues of the original inks. The NC set has been fade tested by RIT and received a >100 years rating with the comment "...seemed to be almost not affected by the exposure to light." Gary expects the NW inks to be even slightly more light resistant. The Sundance NC inks have been available since last summer and I am wondering if anyone out there has given them a try. If anyone has, please share your experiences. The new Sundance NW inks will also be available separately and will be compatible with the R9/Piezo plug-in. This will bring the total of warm tone ink sets for the plug-in up to five! Sundance plans to continuing marketing the original inks but perhaps under a new name such as "Classic". I don't have any pricing information on the ink cartridges but I expect it will be in line with Sundance (www.bwguys.com) pricing. The PixelPicasso will also follow their RIP pricing of $1,495 for the 7600/9600 wide format printers and $495 for the desktop version of the RIP. Particularly exciting for those like me who have neither the resources or space for one of these wide printers, they expect to be selling pre-filled 2200 cartridges by the end of March and expect to sell the hue blending software as $150 plug-in or perhaps simply include support for the ink, the blending feature and the 2200 into the existing R9/ plug-in. This put the entry level price point at $850 for a new 2200 with the plug-in plus the cost of the inks. With the availability of continuous inking systems for the 2200 coming on line this makes the entire thing very attractive. Quite frankly the quality of these prints seems much superior to anything I have seen from the 2200 using the Epson inks. However, like any of the carbon pigment inks, I assume you would not have the ability to print on RC type glossy papers as you can with the Epson ink. Since this software is designed to work with two sets of gray inks that closely match the density range of the original Sundance/Piezo inks, it makes me wonder if you couldn't use it with other pairs of gray inks such as Warm Neutral and Cool Neutral PiezoTone or Selenium and Warm Neutral PT or MIS-FS and FSN or.... I posed this question to Gary and he wrote back: "Both user experience and our own rigorous testing and analysis show that the R9 software will not perform to its maximum capacity when used with unsupported inks or media and may not perform as intended. A change in solvent, dMax, and/or chroma between ink sets would necessitate the profiling of the ink/media/printer configuration. R9 will profile ink sets for manufacturers, but it requires a commitment of resources on the part of the ink manufacturer." This is a very reasonable answer and given the shifts observed in switching from original Piezo to PiezoTone inks with the Piezo plug-in, correct. Change any part of the system and there will be changes in the final result. However, as many of us have found the change is often something we can live with or work around so there may be possibilities in this direction. Gary's last sentence should be of interest to ConeTech and MIS. Sounds like R9 is holding the door open to add support for other ink sets to their software. I hope one, or better both, will seriously consider this offer. Sundance and R9 plan to make the official announcement next weekend at PMA. Hopefully there will be more info then. If you go to PMA, stop in at their booth (P-70) and let us know what you think. Martin Wesley http://www.borderless-photos.de/guests.html [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]