The Piezography process

First the inks.

If it is not obvious, Piezography does not use color ink. Instead, the color inks of a supported Epson or Roland printer are replaced with our Piezography inks. Our inks are manufactured from pure monochromatic pigments chosen for their fade-resistance. Piezography carbon-based pigments are specially shaped and formed to reflect light back to the viewer’s eye in a way that completely eliminates color anomalies such as metamerism. Piezography monochromatic inks have a unique photographic look that includes surface depth and tone substance. Our unique water-based formula permits historical levels of longevity when printed on archival papers. And of course they are water proof. We present our standard tone choices of Neutral, Selenium, Sepia, and Warm Neutral. We offer split-tone sets by selecting a combination of the standards by splitting two different sets at shade 4. We also offer one of our most popular inks ever, Special Edition which is an ink set that has been blended from Neutral, Selenium and Sepia and looks like traditional Platinum print. All of these ink sets are for use with matte papers only. For non-matte papers, the Selenium and Warm Neutral inks can be used with an optional MPS Photo Black shade 1 and a Piezography Gloss Optimizer to make a truly perfected gloss print.

Then the media profiles.

When the color inks are replaced in a supported printer, its printer driver software can no longer be used. Naturally, the printer’s software is programmed to print to CMYK color inks. We suggest the use of QuadTone RIP by Roy Harrington. We wrote our own profiling application for this software that allows us to produce media profiles. We provide these media profiles free of charge to the author or QuadTone RIP. You can purchase QuadTone RIP as a $50 shareware and use our media profiles for free. What we do is use a proprietary method to create a perfect linearization from dMin (paper white) to dMax (maximum black). This linearization is straight and without the characteristic s-curve that is synonymous with conventional darkroom printing. The result is shadows and highlights with detail that could never be realized in a darkroom. Digitized images print with this unique characteristic and without any “tell’tale” sign of dots or other evidence that it has been printed with an inkjet printer. The resulting print can stand on its own merit.

The results.

Firstly, we print a great deal more ink than does Epson’s Advanced Black & White process. The result is that we reflect more substantive light back to the viewer’s eyes from the region of the highlights all the way to the mid-tones. This is a very key area of density that distinctly separates Piezography from EPSON. If you can imagine taking a gigantic crate of marbles and tipping it over. The majority of marbles would rest adjacent to the crate while the remainder would scatter outwards in a pattern that would eventually have fewer and further in between marbles…This pattern of marbles is similar to the Epson dither pattern with its three black inks. In fact, the Epson printer driver has to print fewer and further in between dots of inks to “fool” the eye into thinking it is seeing very light grays. Epson prints as little as 2-3% total inks in making its highlights.

Piezography with seven shades of ink and its proprietary media profiles, prints nearly 45% total ink in the highlights of a very light shade of black ink. Light passes through this ink and reflects off the paper back through the ink and to the viewer’s eyes. The depth is amazing. And this depth continues to amaze right to the mid-tones. From the mid-tones back, Piezography begins to resolve levels of detail that escape the Epson ABW system. We have two additional shades of ink in the darker regions and two additional shades of ink in the highlight regions. It makes a huge difference.

Piezography K7 simply has a lot more of what you need in order to make the best possible black & white print. While Epson has to satisfy color users, it gives only a little to black & white photographers. We only need to satisfy black & white photographers. So we give them our all.

How to buy it for your printer.

That’s easy. Just head over to INKJETMALL which has the complete line of Piezography inks for the following Epson printers: R1400, R800/1800, R1900, R2200, R2400, R2880, Pro 3800, Pro 3880, Pro 4000, Pro 4800, Pro 4880, Pro 7000/7500, Pro 7600/9600, Pro 7800/9800, Pro 7880/9880.