Piezography Pro second batch inks update!
22 March, 2017 by
Piezography Pro second batch inks update!
Jon Cone

Look for Piezography Pro inks online at InkjetMall on Tuesday, March 28! We expect to beswamped with orders and will make every effort to ship as quickly as we can on a first-come-first-served basis. The service you select for shipping will be used as your order becomes available for shipping.

Piezography Pro is our first small batch ink set. Small batches let us tightly control the precise L*ab values from batch to batch for each of the 11 inks. This batch's margin of +/- change in comparison to the first is barely measurable in both L* and *AB. We craft these tightly-controlled inks for Cone Editions Press and for InkjetMall customers all over the world. The printhead performance of these inks is second to none (including the original K7 inks). Our small batchinks are like factory race engines - blueprinted, balanced, and at the highest possible spec.

Thinking of Upgrading to Piezography Pro?

The Piezography Pro dual-quad ink set for 9 ink printers includes photo and matte blacks, Gloss Chroma Optimizer, and dark, medium and light grays in both warm and cool tone.

The Piezography Pro dual-quint ink set for 11 ink printers includes photo and matte blacks, Gloss Chroma Optimizer, and dark, medium, light, and very lightgrays in both warm and cool tone.

The number one question I receive from customersis whether the Piezography Pro dual quad (2 x 4) and dual quint (2 x 5) ink sets can match the fidelity and acuity of Piezography K6 andK7 ink sets. The answer is yes and then some. Piezography Pro is not a K4 or a K5. It does not print with only 4 or 5 shades of black. Piezography Pro ink sets are K7 or K9 ink sets. Piezography Pro is a step up, not down.

Piezography Pro inks are comprised of two toning inks that are blended in software to produce over a million possible blends and split-tones.

The only time 4 or 5 shades of ink would be encountered is when printing pure cool tone or pure warm tone. Those are at the opposite ends of the toning possibility afforded by the dual ink sets. And yet we've designed a new QTR curves architecture that makes sure that these inks print smooth when using only 4 or 5 shades.Piezography Pro is printing almost always with 7 or 9 shades of ink. Below is typical of what is happening when the two ink sets are blended. It's a lot of shades of inks with overlaps and complexity:

Piezography Pro is easily comparable to K6 & K7. The same highlight and shadow definition. The acuity is there. The tightness in control of these inks along with a new curves architecture makes this our best system ever!

The second most frequently asked question I get is whether you can reproduce your current K7 ink tone with Piezography Pro inks. First the two ink systems are quite different. With that said, Neutral K7 and Warm Neutral K7 become 'new and improved' with the dual toning Piezography Pro inks. Further, the tone can be adjusted according to paper base. That is not something that is possible with K7. You get a better neutral that produces 1000s of different blended tones that are just off axis of neutral. You can dial in a neutral to satisfy your 'sense' of neutral. Likewise, you can hit the Warm Neutral sweet spot or adjust it to better fit your sensibilities. But, Pro inks are not replacements for K7. It is a whole new paradigm.

The two K7 ink sets which we can't quite replicate are Selenium K7 and Carbon K7. Piezography Pro inkscan get closebut not exact.Pro can go cold like Selenium and warm like Carbon, but it does so in a different way than the K7 ink sets.

The benefits of upgrading are full of possibilities!

There are actually one million possible different tone combinations you can set with the dual tone quad or quint ink sets just prior to printing. And yes you can save these settings! So, the potential for unlimited expression is unleashed. We can equalize tone density whether on matte paper of glossy paper. In the image above the top two rows are Pro matte prints and the two bottom rows are Pro glossy prints. The contrast is equalized. Having the industry's darkest matte black (Ultra HD)helps accomplish this but so does our proprietary PPE toolset. We put the tools in your hand! Although we provide a slew of media profiles you now have the option of linearizing your own. With the optional Piezography Professional Edition (PPE) tools you can master your own domain. For some it will be the occasional check on linearity, and for others the PPE tools can actually be a creative center in defining the output characteristics of Piezography Pro inks. That's a choice you can make in regards to how much you like to fiddle with things. PPE supports the i1, ColorMunki and Spyder tools. It now includes the new Blender Tool (Thanks for your support Early Adopters!).

Single pass gloss printing is what most the early adopters are telling me is their single most favorite feature. K7 requires two passes through the printer. Piezography PRO prints the GCO (gloss chroma optimizer) at the same time as the inks and the results are superior to K7 glossiness and at a level way above anything Epson, Canon or HP have to offer. Below is a side by side comparison between Epson ABW on the Epson SureColor P-800 and Piezography Pro on an Epson 3880. Which would you prefer?

Piezography Pro is the one on the right (without all the bronzing).
dMax! Maximum darkness has been super tweaked in this ink set. The matte black is formulated from a new generation of carbon designed to absorb most of the light reaching it. Ours is the darkest matte black ink on Earth. You will see a huge jump from your K7 system (although with PPE tools you can upgrade K7 to the new Ultra HD Matte Black ink). Piezography Pro can literally produce a matte print that can stand up to a glossy print in terms of impact! The new HD-Photo Black is glossier and denser than our K7 photo black.

In case you are curious what the new black ink looks like in comparison to our existing Piezography K7 Shade 1 matte black - the photo above was taken in our studio today for comparison. The dMax increases from 1.64 to 1.81 on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag.Hahnemuhle Bamboo produces 1.83. That is an L* value under 13 for MATTE PAPER!! Look for Piezography Pro online at InkjetMall on Tuesday, March 28!

Introducing Higher dMax!

Ultra HD Matte Black is the darkest matte black ink on Earth. Not Epson, not Canon, not HP, nor any 3rd party can touch it! It is proudly produced by Vermont PhotoInkjet and sold exclusively through InkjetMall and our new authorized sole European distributor Taos Photographic in Toulouse, France. There simply is nothing else like it being produced by anyone anywhere!

We measured the new Ultra HD and Epson SureColor HD matte black inks to compare them byprinting and drying a single channel of ink usingthe same printer and the same standard settings in QTR Calibration mode. This way we compared apples to apples, or carbon to carbon. Ultra HD Matte Black produces a dMax of 1.82 on Epson Hot Press Bright White and Natural White paper. By comparison, Epson's newest SureColor P-800 HD Matte Black produces a dMax of only 1.74 on the same papers. 1.74 is nothing to snicker about. It's a huge upgrade to Epson'sprevious matte black. But, Ultra HD is a huge upgrade to Epson's latests MK.If you know your dMax - 1.82 is a WOW! The original Epson Matte Black and the original Piezography Matte Black can reach 1.64. Jumping from 1.64 to 1.82 or higher is visually startling. We're offering a print sample which you can purchase at InkjetMall for $35.00 where you can see this benefit in action!This sample print is a signed unlimited edition print by the artist, Walker Blackwell, using Piezography Pro to appear 'neutral' on Hanhemuhle Photo Rag UltraSmooth. It is an excellent example of the acuity, smooth toneand the Ultra HD super dark matte black ink.

Ultra HD comes standard in the new Piezography Pro ink sets.If you do not want to upgrade to Piezography Pro from K7, you can upgrade your existing K7 ink set to Ultra HD Matte Black provided that you purchase the Piezography Professional Edition toolset and produce your own linearizations.

Piezography Pro HD Photo Black is also new. And it's also very dark. It is the Photo Black that is used in the new Piezography Pro system. Regular Piezography K7 glossy prints using the HD PK option are improved. It's visually apparent. You can incorporate the new HD Photo Black into your current Piezography K7, and P2 printing by using Piezography Professional Edition Software to linearize your own choice of media using this new ink option. If you do not produce new linearizations, there will be a jump from the blacker dMax into the greyscale transition at the shadows. Producing a custom linearization will make the transition from blacker dMax more natural. We do not really recommend that you upgrade to this black without creating new linearizations (curves for QTR). You must use the original GO as a second pass with K7 and P2 Piezography systems. Both of the new blacks are currently being sold. You can find Ultra HD Matte Black here. You can find High Density Photo Black here.

Piezography Professional Edition Software

Piezography Professional Edition tools is a new software product that we designed for Piezography Pro inks. Itwill also benefit current K7, K6 and P2 users. The software allows you to produce yourown Piezography Pro, P2, K7 and K6 curvelinearizations. You can use it with current K7, K6 and P2 systems to incorporate our new Piezography Pro HD Photo Black and Ultra HD Matte Blackinks or tosuperlatizeyour current inks using our new Master Curves. You can read more about Piezography Professional Edition Software as well as purchase it here. Piezography Professional Edition Software does a lot more than just profiling. It can also build-in aesthetic intents into your Piezography curves. That alone might be worth the price of admission! The cost is $150 for a years license to our online linearization tools. You can renew your license annually. And we hope that you will continue to support us supporting you that way. If the community grows as we expect it to, we will be able to lower our annual re-licensing fees. If you do not renew your license, you will not be able to access the online proprietary Piezography smoothing algorithms or access the Professional Edition Software community forum. But, you will still be able to keep and use the downloaded software tools to continue making your linearizations..
Piezography Pro second batch inks update!
Jon Cone
22 March, 2017
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