Digital BW, The Print

Bingo!  These have been my thoughts since problem issues started surfacing on 
the Piezo list, a product rushed to market a little too quickly in order to 
capture the market.

I also suspect that IJM will face competition from MIS.  As a startup 
company, IJM does not seem to have a strong business model in place.  They 
publicly deny problems until they become overwhelming, their support 
department is understaffed and technically inadequate to the point of 
infuriating customers who have problems, Jon and Bill contradict each other 
on and off the Piezo list, and finally, IJM ink is 5 times the cost of MIS 
ink.

These opinions are based on my personal experience with IJM.  I had 
technically perfect green prints and the issue took close to 3 months to 
resolve with IJM.  That was far too long.  I am now printing a portfolio and 
have switched to MIS simply because I am afraid to use Piezo.  I do not want 
problems mid-stream.  My problems with Piezo occurred over time; the printing 
of this portfolio will be interrupted because I have other obligations.

Price, disgruntled customers, and praise for new products leads to losing 
customers.

P.S.  I am thrilled with the MIS inks and Paul's curves.  Unlike others on 
this list, I find them usuable right out of the box.  They match my monitor 
perfectly.  Perhaps those with problems are not following Paul's directions 
to the letter.  I noticed someone using PS 6 and placing Paul's curve ahead 
of other curves.  I use PS 5 default and apply the curves by themselves after 
everything is finalized.  (Maybe the poster is using a different printer?)

I might still try IJM selenium inks but only after a break-in period of 
monitoring users' experience.  And I will use my waiting bottles of PiezoBW 
when it is "safe" for me to do so.

Helene  

"This is a shot in the dark and maybe you can ask Jon if I am correct, 
but my impression is that Piezo grew out of Jon's work to print 
platinum like prints on the Iris. It may be that this ink transferred 
well to the 3000 but as they expanded into the other models the 
clogging issue came as a surprise. If that is how it occurred then 
they would be in a real jam because fixing the "clogging" issue for 
the minority of printers could lead to other problems. The other 
tough problem is that when ink is ordered from the manufacturer there 
is probably a minimum size and a little bit of ink goes a very long 
ways. So they don't get a lot of chances to tweak the product in 
process, which would be risky in any case. So the best thing to do 
might be to just gut it out. This is all speculation mind you.. 

I think the real economic pressure might come from the MIS Full 
Spectrum inks and not the MIS Variable Mix. If the MIS continues to 
be "clog" free, at the lower price and if no other problems surface, 
I would expect a fair number of people to buy Piezo and then switch 
to the FS inks. However, MIS has missed the boat here by not selling 
the FS in a hex set and the quad printers are vanishing fast. I would 
think this would put pressure on ConeTech to reformulate but it would 
make sense to do this after the "selenium" is in place."


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

on 10/3/01 11:17 AM, grdglass@... wrote:

> P.S.  I am thrilled with the MIS inks and Paul's curves.  Unlike others on
> this list, I find them usuable right out of the box.  They match my monitor
> perfectly.  Perhaps those with problems are not following Paul's directions
> to the letter.  I noticed someone using PS 6 and placing Paul's curve ahead
> of other curves.  I use PS 5 default and apply the curves by themselves after
> everything is finalized.  (Maybe the poster is using a different printer?)

Perhaps you are referring to me. I'm not clear on which direction you read
the layer pallet from when you say "placing Paul's curve ahead
 of other curves". I put them at the top of the layer stack. If they are not
at the top of the layer stack. Adjustment Layers are calculated upon the
image one at a time, from the bottom of the stack to the top. So putting
them at the top is the same as applying them on top of a flattened version
of my file with layers. Keeping my layers active simply allows me to go back
and edit the image more easily. Unfortunately, even in this digital age, I
find it takes me many iterations of a print before I settle. Some of that is
because I like to see "what if?".

Todd

Jerry and Todd,

Well, this is a far more efficient method than what I was doing.  Do you 
happen to know what the PS warning "changing modes will affect layer 
compositing," followed by whether to flatten or not, actually does?

Thanks, it's a real time saver.

Helene


> Helene, I don't think in most cases you have to flatten your image
> 

"Right, like Jerry says, I can work in Grayscale for a while making
adjustment layers, then I switch to RGB to try a print and add on Paul's
curves."


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

I don't know, but I choose not to flatten and all seems okay. I think it's
applicable to some of the more advanced layer blending options you can
access through double clicking on the layer-- you know the blending sliders,
knockout, drop shadows, fancy effects, etc. Some of those effects depend
upon layer order, apply modes, etc., and the the final effect of those
options get altered when the layers are flattened. But for the more common
types of tonal adjustment layers, I see no difference. In either case, what
we want is to NOT flatten the image, and so far I've not run into trouble.

Todd

> Jerry and Todd,
> 
> Well, this is a far more efficient method than what I was doing.  Do you
> happen to know what the PS warning "changing modes will affect layer
> compositing," followed by whether to flatten or not, actually does?
> 
> Thanks, it's a real time saver.
> 
> Helene
> 
> 
>> Helene, I don't think in most cases you have to flatten your image
>> 
> 
> "Right, like Jerry says, I can work in Grayscale for a while making
> adjustment layers, then I switch to RGB to try a print and add on Paul's
> curves."
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> 
> 
> 
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Helene, if you blend any of your layers using the 'blend modes'  those
transformations will be dramatically effected by a mode conversion. As each
layer mode effects the colors of the pixels beneath it, changing the pixel
information (with a mode change) will change the way the layers blend.  ie:
multiply, overlay, soft light etc...

Carolyn

>> Jerry and Todd,
>> 
>> Well, this is a far more efficient method than what I was doing.  Do you
>> happen to know what the PS warning "changing modes will affect layer
>> compositing," followed by whether to flatten or not, actually does?
>> 
>> Thanks, it's a real time saver.
>> 
>> Helene