Carbon – 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 6 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 printer. We have only a few sets of these available. If you’ve been thinking of Carbon K7 or Carbon K6 and you have an...Read more

Passing 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 active and still developing ink system. Note:...Read more

Photogravure 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 plate is an option if one of the traditional metal...Read more

My 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 realized that the designation “sepia” was a...Read more

Now we’re farming! New Piezography Developments

July is here. The weather is hot. Development time for all new Piezography products is at hand. While the Piezography for Canon project requires new ink formulation and testing (a long process), prior to installing in the big 8300, new EPSON projects can move forward using the existing ink K7 formulations. We’ve had a Canon 8300 waiting patiently, but unless the formulation is perfect – it will ruin the heads. So little baby Canons will be tested (slaughtered) until the formula is ready to go on the brand spanking new Canon 8300. Life on a farm can be cruel. Last week, we received...Read more

Piezography ink workshop

After a gathering of printmakers at the SPE conference in March 2011, vaguely documented here - Jon Cone invited everyone to Cone Editions for a “Piezography ink workshop” or print-fest, general gathering.. as Scott King and Bill Kennedy were planning to attend an unrelated workshop in the area. With Walker a Vermonter, that left just John Dean and myself having to travel. Ultimately Scott and Bill had to cancel, but with travel plans in place Walker, John, and myself arrived at Cone Editions Thursday June 9th.   An experience like this at the receiving end of Cathy and Jon...Read more

Don Messec: Making Art Safely, Part 2

My second day of working with Don Messec of Making Art Safely (see Part 1 by clicking here) was intended to be used to determine if Piezography inks can bring anything unique to his photopolymer gravure process. But, it would also include consumption of mass quantities of smoked salmon tacos and meeting some talented and interesting friends and students of Don. Photopolymer gravure is a rather new printmaking process that combines modern UV actuated polymers with a very old tradition of photo intaglio printmaking. Gravure is a process that has traditionally meant different things to different...Read more

Don Messec: Making Art Safely, Part 1

Last week I was working with Don Messec at his amazing and healthy printmaking studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Don has dedicated the last two decades to making art safer for printmakers and artists. I am a classic example of a printmaker that had been made terribly ill from decades of chemicals, solvents and body-migrating pigments. I went cold turkey about 1993. Luckily, I had been making prints digitally since 1985 – so I had an active venue to pursue and a way to continue moving forward in a more healthy environment. Also, having recently moved to Vermont in 1988, I had access to...Read more

The Piezography Print Archives

Own a little bit of photographic history printed in a much higher state of fidelity than was available “back in the day”. The Piezography Archives is intended to serve two purposes. First, it allows institutions and collectors an opportunity to purchase examples of the Piezography process. The Piezography process is an invention that will certainly be included in the history of Photography as the bridge between analogue black & white photography and the ongoing digital color revolution in which black & white photography is being replaced by a subset of color inkjet...Read more

Piezography Digital Negative meets Mark Nelson’s Precision Digital Negative (PDN optional not required)

Last week in the darkroom, I used Mark Nelson’s Precision Digital Negative (PDN) system to linearize a Piezography Digital Negative. The PDN system was designed for use with color inks and the Epson printer driver. Through a five step process it creates a digital negative by choosing the best combination of color inks that block UV light and creating and exporting a Photoshop curve that is used to adjust the image before printing to film. However, the use of color inks and the Epson printer driver often produces an apparent dithering that looks a bit like a venetian blind. While it gets...Read more

Making a fine Piezography print

A new Piezography Chronicle has been produced on the basics of making a fine Piezography print. Piezography does not take any particular skill that is not required to make a competent print with an OEM solution. Having said that, not everyone can make a print using the OEM solution in a competent manner. This PDF is “basics” that covers the steps you need to take to begin using Piezography, so that Piezography can begin to support your images with its inherent beauty, smoothness, and superior print qualities. This PDF covers subjects like scanning, calibration, workflow, usage of...Read more

QTR User Guide for Mac updated

I’ve updated the Piezography QuadTone RIP K7/K6 User Manual for Macintosh. While we try to warn users NOT to rely on the standard QTR manual that is part of the QTR package, it is not because Roy Harrington’s excellent manual is anything but excellent. Rather it is because Piezography K7/K6 is NOT COMPATIBLE with normal QuadTone RIP workflow. The main reason is because of the way in which I engineer K7/K6 curves. I do not use the QuadTone RIP Curves tool. I use my own software that then compiles the curves into code that QTR can use when printing. I adhere strictly to a Gamma 2.2...Read more