What in a nutshell is Piezography?
25 November, 2010 by
What in a nutshell is Piezography?
Jon Cone

I was asked on the phone yesterday this exact question. The prospective customer wanted to know in as few words possible, what exactly Piezography is, what it would do for him, whether he could easily install it, and if he could use it with his current software. He explained that the information on our website is good but intensive. After answering him, I decided to write a blog entry about it.

What exactly Piezography is:

It’s a combination of a six or seven shade monochromatic ink set, and a system of media profiles that are called Curves which Piezography has adapted to work with the QuadTone RIP printer driver. Together they form a synergistic result that has become the highest standard in black & white printing.

What Piezography will do for you:

If you’re using Epson printers to produce black & white prints, replacing the Epson color inks with the monochromatic Piezography inks and media profiles will produce finer detail, better highlight and shadow definition, smoother tonal scale, and zero metamerism. The surface reflection of the printed image will be without any trace of color and will have a significantly better “depth”. The prints have the look and feel of a fine platinum or palladium print, but with an exceptionally long tonal range. In fact, the tonal range of Piezography is considerably longer than any traditional darkroom or printing out photographic process. The “S” curve of these traditional processes is completely straightened out resulting in several more stops of available information. Photographers who scan their film will be able to print information that they will not have seen in their darkroom processes. Digital Photographers will have a process that can match the extended dynamic range of today’s sophisticated CCDs.

Is Piezography easy to install:

The QuadTone RIP (QTR) is downloaded from www.quadtonerip.com/piezobw    This is not our software, but we provide all the Piezography K7 and K6 media profiles in it for free.  The cost of this shareware is $50. You install the system and it works differently on Macs and Windows.  From Mac it is an option under the Print menu. With Windows it is a stand alone application. All the media profiles which we include for free will be available from the pull down menus in the QTR dialogue.  You can read exactly how to use these by going to our Piezography Knowledge Library and looking at our manuals or clicking here.

Can you use QTR with your current software?

Windows users can create their Grayscale images from any application that will save a TIFF format file. Mac Users can send a Grayscale image to QTR directly from any application that creates Grayscale images and has the standard Mac Print Menu. Mac Users can also purchase an optional ImageNest RIP which acts as an elaborate interface to QTR permitting positioning and scaling of multiple images.

You can choose a Piezography printing system for your supported printer (1400, 800/1800, 1900, 2200/2100, 2400, 2880, 3800, 3880, 4000, 4800, 4880, 7000, 7500, 7600, 7800, 7880, 9000, 9500, 9600, 9800, 9880) by clicking here.

What in a nutshell is Piezography?
Jon Cone
25 November, 2010
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