Piezography Pro pre-release news
3 October, 2016 by
Piezography Pro pre-release news
Jon Cone

There has never been a photographic printing process like this before.

At Cone Editions Press and InkjetMall we are deeply committed to the artistic process and over the years, Lewis Hine’s life, work, seminal photograph Power house mechanic working on steam pump, 1920 has captivated our attention. It’s personal for us. We’ve used the photograph internally as a validation and R&D image and we developed this ink set as almost an homage to his work and other great photographers both past and present. His trailblazing lives on through the work of the great artists who continue to print their images at the highest quality possible no matter what.

So, imagine if Lewis Hine printing 95 years ago had access to a monochromatic system that made prints with higher fidelity than silver, as luminous as platinum, with longevity to pass the test of time, and could be produced in a million different tones or split tones. How might his artistic vision have been transformed? How might his experience in the darkroom have been transformed by such a system? How might the history of photography been transformed by such a system? Now imagine transforming your own images this way. Imagine transforming your own experience this way.

At Cone Editions Press, we get to print with custom Piezography systems. We make batches of oddly suitable inks for photographer’s projects which need them. We get down with custom software when it moves us. We invented Piezography this way and we’ve reinvented it this way time and time again. We eat, breath, and often do not sleep because of Piezography.

So, rather than reinvent a new system for our exclusive use, we reimagined and reinvented a new Piezography for you. There has never been a Piezography like this one.

Piezography Pro Cool and Warm Ink Sets

Welcome to the control center for Piezography Pro inks

This is where you endlessly blend or split-tone the cool and warm ink sets together with precision control in the shadows, mid-tones, and highlights. You have one million possible combinations that you can adjust using two or three sets of sliders. Finding your own expression is probably going to be very unique to you.

On the left is the QuadTone RIP interface for using Piezography Pro ink sets. Split-Tone is checked so that the sliders operate independently in shadows, midtones, and highlights. In this example, there are neutral, warm, and cool curves for Hahnemuhle Photo Rag paper.

The neutral curve gives you a starting point for creating neutral from the two ink sets. You can use it on its own and produce a neutral on a supported media paper, or combine it with the cool / warm curves to produce what you see or what you measure as neutral. Using the neutral curve along with the cool / warm curves makes the system subtle. Using only the cool / warm curves to do stronger split-toning. Uncheck the Split-Tone option to blend the inks evenly across the entire tonal range.

 

We’re setting the bar higher (again)
  • We innovated a new type of ink glossiness that is unprecedented in the industry without giving up our superior matte paper printing.
  • With one-pass printing, your gloss will have absolutely no bronzing nor gloss differential. A gloss print now takes no longer than when making a matte print.
  •  We innovated a blacker carbon photo black.
  • You’ll print blacker gloss blacks than you can with any other OEM or 3rd party system.
  • We innovated a new ‘curves’ architecture to be used in combination with the QuadTone RIP printer driver from Roy Harrington. Piezography Pro prints can stand side-by-side with a traditional Piezography K7 prints.
  • We packaged the Piezography profiling algorithms into an optional software called Piezography Professional Edition that you can license annually to perform your own linearizations with Piezography Pro inks or traditional Piezography K7/K6 inks.
New! Piezography Professional Edition software for Piezography Pro and K7/K6 inks.
  • Use Piezography Professional Edition software to re-profile your environment when something changes, or re-profile a particular batch of paper, or create a profile for a new paper that you find interesting.
  • Use curve tuning with our software to match your imagination, or to match your display, or to include a creative Photoshop curve intent inside of a QuadTone RIP curve.
  • Piezography Professional Edition offers endless possibilities for creative expression when paired with Piezography Pro inks.
  • Create your own autographic system.
  • Use Piezography Professional Edition with existing K7 and K6 curves to superlatize your output or create profiles for new media.
Welcome to a Community

Download and read our new Piezography Manual that shows you how to use these new tools. We built a private support forum for Piezography Professional Edition software Pro, K7, K6, and P2 users. Piezography Professional Edition is extensible. Your support (annual licensing fee) will keep our development front and center and allow us to continually provide you with masterful and knowledgeable product support, new master curves, and upgraded toolsets.

We are also offering a free Community Edition of published curve sets for those who prefer not to try their hand in the mystical nature of curve calibration, or who do not own or prefer not to invest in a spectrophotometer. But, we also include tools that allow you to use your eye or a scanner to make these linearizations.  You do not need to buy Piezography Professional Edition software to use the new Piezography Pro inks.

The upcoming Piezography Pro Ink Pre-Sale

Our plan is to have a pre-sale on Oct 18 to offer Piezography Pro ink sales to our current customers. The pre-sale will be a special offer and will be an unpublished URL. We will deliver these pre-sale systems beginning on Nov 17 first-come-first-served. On Nov 17, we will begin taking orders from new customers with delivery either in November or in January if our pre-sale consumes the first batch of Piezography Pro ink.

The new ink is the heart and soul of Piezography Pro. It is the first ink that we have both spec’d and then batch formulated in our Vermont ink sampling lab. And we’re going to try and keep producing it that way. Small batches will allow us to more readily develop new ink designs in the future. Piezography Pro is 100% Made in Vermont small batch goodness!

Piezography Pro is being released for the Epson R2880, R3000, 3800, 3880, 4800, 4880, 4900, 7800, 7880, 7890, 7900, 9800, 9880, 9890, and 9900 printers as well as limited support for the 11880. The Epson R1900 and R2000 will be added later in 2017. As we initially reported and according to Epson, the SureColor P-800 and larger printers are designed to “work only with Epson brand carts”. There are reports of refillable cartridge users being locked out of their printer after a P-800 refillable cartridge resets its chip for the first time. We will not be supporting these models until there is a better solution than is currently available.

TIP: We recommend sourcing a free Epson Pro 4900, 7900, or 9900 printer with one or two missing channels to run the dual/quad Piezography Pro. A single missing channel is very common with Epson inks. Piezography inks perform really well in Epson 4900, 7900 and 9900 printers. PiezoFlush can usually recover missing channels. Look locally for one that has not sat for more than a few months. Many people are more than happy to have someone come and cart it down stairs for free. We’ve obtained several printers this way, recovered them with PiezoFlush, and have recycled these donated printers by giving them to education institutions that now have fully functioning Piezography / Digital Negative systems. What better way to get into Piezography Pro than with a free printer.

Upgrade FAQs: 

Can I use any of my existing Piezography K7 inks if I want to upgrade to Piezography Pro inks?
You can only use the Piezography K7 matte black. All the other positions are new and unrelated to K7.

Can I just rinse out my older carts and fill them with the new inks?
We recommend that you use new cartridges. You can rinse out your old cartridges to use with PiezoFlush or to keep around as emergency spares. But, this is a very precise system and we would encourage you to use new cartridges.

What if I do not own a spectrophotometer? Does Piezography Pro come with a full set of curves or will I have to buy Piezography Professional Editions software to make my own?
Piezography Pro comes with curve sets for many popular papers. Each curve set includes a warm, cool and neutral curve which can be blended using the shadow, mid-tone, and highlight controls. Many users will not need to create custom paper curves. And many users would not think of starting a printing session without doing so if they could!

Can I use the new Piezography Professional Editions software with existing Piezography K7 and K6 inks?
Yes,  you can! The Piezography Professional Editions software is an independent product.

Can I use the new Piezography Professional Editions software with existing Piezography K7 and K6 inks?
Yes,  you can! The Piezography Professional Editions software is an independent product.

Will the new SureColor printers be supported?
There are two critical issues we are working on. First, we are not satisfied with the dithering that is available with these new printers when used with more than three blacks. This may be intentional by design. Second, the P800 and higher models have built-in circuitry for permanently disabling 3rd party cartridges after the first chip reset. We do not want to sell supplies that will lock our customers out of ever using their printers again with 3rd party inks. Once the circuit is activated it can not be reset.

Piezography Pro pre-release news
Jon Cone
3 October, 2016
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