Blog
Photoshop CS6 Beta/Mac
This is the Piezography workflow for Adobe CS6 Photoshop beta. One of our fellow Piezographers, Tracy Valleau, alerted us recently to the new Printing Policy of Adobe Photoshop CS6. From this version forward, Photoshop will no longer permit printing without Color Management. Further, they will not permit Color Management in which an image is converted into the same space as the source space. While they plan to provide a printer utility to users who wish to print without Color Management, it is currently buggy. Mac users who print from...
read moreDigital Negative Update
I. Background This update is a way to use both Piezography Digital Negative and the Piezography K7 printing systems together by swapping out two ink positions and using newly reorganized QTR curves when one wants to make digital negatives – and then swapping back in the two original Piezography ink positions in order to make prints. The Piezography Digital Negative System was developed to find a way to eliminate the artifacts produced when using color inks and the Epson printer driver to make digital negatives. The use of color...
read morePiezography2
We are nearly ready to roll out the release version of Piezography®2. The pre-release versions have been out in the hands of photographers and printmakers for months now. We’ve been customizing solutions on a for ask basis. But, now we are compiling all the curves and making ready the installation packages for QuadTone RIP. What is Piezography2? Since 2005, Piezography systems have been based upon using all of the available ink slots in a printer in order to maximize the fidelity. Most of the printers we support have eight or more ink...
read moredMax
What can you say about dMax that has not already been said? A little. And tons. In the analogue days of old it was drilled into us by our teachers that a darkroom print required a strong black and a white. Yet, they never literally meant that. They attempted to get us to see contrast in order to awaken our senses. We needed a strong white and a strong black in order to first see that. Then, those same areas in the print became less desirable as we consciously began to see and to express light. Fine printing became more about the vast...
read moreDigital Carbon Tintypes with Bonny Lhotka
Way back in 1992 I gave a workshop at the Massachusettes College of Art called “Beyond the Digital Print”. I paired an IRIS 3047 printer with an etching press inside of a traditional printmaking studio. About a dozen people attended and Bonny Lhotka was one of the most memorable to me. She had this unbridled enthusiasm for the transfer techniques I demonstrated. Twenty years later, I took an inkjet transfer workshop from her. My visit there a few weeks ago made me realize that she owns the concept of inkjet transfer, and has made...
read moreSomething extreme
In 2005, I discovered a very exciting paper that is hand made in Japan only by custom order. This paper is 21st century adaptation of traditional Japanese washi. I’ve been printing on this paper continuously ever since. I’m having somewhat of a love affair with it. Each sheet is an object. Actually, each sheet is carefully inspected and measured for weight and then carefully tagged at it’s corner as a guarantee of content. The paper is very expensive. Giant eight by fourteen foot sheets cost thousands of dollars each. The...
read moreCarbon – Try Me!
I had a photographer who uses black ink only in his Epson R1400 ask me if there was an inexpensive way to try Piezography Carbon K6 or K7 in his printer. At the time, we only had a set of 4oz bottles and refillable carts and the cost is over $280. Although this is the equivalent of nearly ten sets of cartridges and quite inexpensive to use, as a try me item – it is difficult to rationalize the expense. So, we pre-charged a few sets of refillable carts for the Epson R1400, R1800, R1900, R2400 and R2880 printers. We have only a few sets of...
read morePassing of an Ink Icon: PiezoTone 2002 – 2012
PiezoTones are being discontinued effective March 2012. What ink remaining in inventory will be the last of its kind. The inks affected are PiezoTone WN, PiezoTone CS, PiezoTone, ST, Museum Black, Portfolio Black. We notified all current PiezoTone customers (who have purchased in the last two years) that PiezoTone is now discontinued. There is only a small amount of ink remaining and we believe PiezoTone customers may be able to sustain this ink habit for a year or two, but we believe that they should migrate to Piezography K7 which is an...
read morePhotogravure using Image-on HD and Piezography Digital Film
The photogravure process with Image on requires that the blacks first be formed by exposing the plate through an aquatint screen, which, if left unaltered, when inked, would produce a rich black over the whole surface. The subsequent exposure through a film positive causes the Image-on HD film to “close up” the wells of the aquatint relative to the density of the film positive – more light = smaller “wells” that are farther apart = lighter grays in the inked print. In this workflow – the plate is not etched. While etching the...
read moreMy Experience With K7 Carbon – Something to Behold
There have been a lot of advances in pigment inkjet imaging over the last decade. In the realm of monochrome digital photographic printmaking, Jon Cone of Cone Editions in Topsham Vermont has led the way for printmakers like me to discover all the subtleties that this medium has to offer. Jon has created a wide variety of hue sets of Piezography carbon based inks, but the one that I keep coming back to, for both my clients and my personal work is the K7 100% Carbon set. It was formally known as Carbon Sepia. I believe that recently Jon...
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