QTR-Quadtone RIP

All-


I don't often post, and much appreciate the community on this list, but must take issue with any notion that Mark Nelson's reasonable licensing plan for PDN is greedy. It is not.



We spend tens of thousands of dollars purchasing and licensing software for our university digital labs every year. It is not only a legal requirement, but the right thing to do. We teach our undergraduates this schema and actively discourage unlicensed "sharing" or pirated software. How can photographers expect their copyright to respected if we do not, in turn, respect the copyright of others?



I also own K2 Press, Inc., in Austin, Tx. (www.k2press.com); and we gladly pay a licensing fee to use PDN to produce digital negatives for our clients. In turn, we have received remarkable customer support from Mark Nelson.



PDN is a brilliant solution for digital negatives and worth every penny. The individual licensing fee should be higher, in my opinion, but I appreciate Mark's generosity. FYI, Jon Cone's adaptation of PDN for his system is excellent and very well thought out. If you have the inks, or purchase them, I strongly recommend checking it out.


Bill Kennedy
Professor of Photocommunications
Area Coordinator
St. Edward's University
Austin, Texas USA



-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Vlach <alanvlach@...>
To: QuadtoneRIP <QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tue, Jan 17, 2012 2:47 am
Subject: Re: [QuadtoneRIP] Re: PDN system and QTR


I want to be clear that I like and respect Mark Nelson. He put a lot of work 
into developing his system (more than two years) and feels he should be 
compensated for that. It is unique in concept and works like a charm. It was 
absolutely the best system when printers only had one black ink in the inkset.

Ron Reeder is extremely approachable and helpful. I think his method is as good 
as PDN given where printer technology is today. But it is much more trial and 
error during calibration. It takes me about twice as long to do a calibration 
using his QTR method versus PDN.

You should also check out Jon Cone's blog. He has done a lot of work with 
Piezography and digital negatives. Problem is there is a large initial 
investment in his inks and delivery system as well as a dedicated printer for 
negs as he used different inks for negs than for b&w printing on digital papers. 


Alan


On Jan 17, 2012, at 1:46 AM, stormbytes wrote:

> Alan,
> 
> Interesting that you point it out. I guess I'm not the only one annoyed with 
Mark Nelson's extensive (and fairly greedy) patent scheme. No one else (pick 
your author) seems to place such hurdles in the way of teaching creativity.
> 
> I'm a big fan of Ron Reeder. I've purchased his recent book on making digital 
negatives for platinum/palladium printing (which he noted would work well for 
silver gelatin too!) and emailed him with questions on a number of occasions. 
He's a great guy!
> 
> While I'm just starting out experimenting with QTR and Ron's method, I've come 
across enough material to be optimistic. 
> 
> --- In QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com, Alan Vlach <alanvlach@...> wrote:
> >
> > Check out Ron Reeder's site. He has a procedure for making negatives with 
QTR. I use QTR and Mark Nelson's Curve Calculator software to execute the steps 
and calculate the curves. PDN itself is based on the use of color (and no black 
inks) to create smooth tonalities in the digital negative. I have used it 
extensively and it is an excellent method to make negatives, but is patented ( 
you can't teach it without permission which he only gives to university 
professors or use it for profit without paying a commission) , and, since I 
teach workshops in making negatives I have switched to using QTR. Ron Reeder's 
method mixes all the inks when making a negative and I feel the results are as 
good as PDN. The only downside is that PDN is very stepwise and straightforward 
during the calibration process whereas there is a lot of testing and guesswork 
to determine the right ink mix using QTR when mixing all the inks. 
> > 
> > Hope this helps
> > 
> > Alan
> > 
> > 
> > On Dec 26, 2011, at 3:22 PM, mysteriousmirage wrote:
> > 
> > > Hello,
> > > 
> > > Has anyone had expereince using the Mark Nelson Precision Digital Negative 
system with QTR? If so, what has been your expereince? 
> > > 
> > > Thanks,
> > > 
> > > -Ted
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
> 
> 



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