What is Piezography?

Piezography is a brand of monochromatic inks and software that produce what is unarguably the absolute highest-standard in black and white printing. It was first introduced as a Trademarked brand in 2000 and has gone through successive improvements and changes over the years. It is a process that is constantly exceeding the capabilities of the printers on which it is implemented. Piezography is developed by Jon Cone in the village of East Topsham, Vermont, USA who first introduced monochromatic inkjet printing at PhotoPlus Expo in NYC in 1998. His monochromatic inkjet systems were initially designed for IRIS Graphics printers in 1993.

But, Piezography is more than just changing out the color inks in your EPSON printer and replacing it with Piezography shades of carbon black ink. You also need a special software to make the effect work. Piezography is inks and software working in harmony. Jon Cone develops a profiling application with which he produces K6 and K7 profiles for QuadTone RIP. This combination is to date the highest quality implementation of the Piezography system - yet it is amazingly affordable. QuadTone RIP is only $50 and includes the Piezography profiles at no additional charge. For large format printers, StudioPrint by ErgoSoft includes a Piezography ink profiler. A new Piezography RIP being developed by a new company is being planned for release at Photokina in Cologne in September, 2008.

Piezography K7 is the latest generation of product and is a sharp contrast in quality and longevity when compared to EPSON K3 printers and their Advanced Black option. While EPSON has just recently introduced printers with seven and eight inks, they have only introduced three black shades of ink. Piezography which first introduced 4 shades of black ink in 2000, introduces seven shades of black for these printers. Piezography takes advantage of the seven inkjet heads in EPSON printers to produce significantly higher quality monochromatic prints, than can EPSON with only three shades of black ink.

Because Piezography uses seven shades of black ink with which to produce the highest quality monochromatic photograph, Piezography can reproduce the image in a much higher quality by moving the printer dots of ink significantly closer together than can EPSON. Piezography provides a set of ink curve sets for the QuadTone RIP driver that directs the EPSON printer to print each shade of Piezography black at a significantly higher dithering frequency. The best way to represent this is to put the two systems to a test which illustrates this concept and reveals the strengths and weaknesses between the two systems.

We produced a design of text in 1pt size. While this type size is nearly too small to read, it does represent the level of detail that most photographers would like to believe an inkjet printer can resolve. While an EPSON K3 printer still can not resolve this level of detail, Piezography can by controlling the printer through its K7 profiles and the QuadTone RIP driver.

What this test shows besides EPSON inability to resolve fine detail is that the EPSON Advanced Black and White Printer driver uses dots of magenta, cyan and yellow ink in printing black and white photographs. This is significant because color inks do not decay and fade at the same rate, and black and white prints made with the EPSON Advanced Black and White driver will be subject to color shifting over time as the magenta, cyan and yellow dots of ink begin to fade. Because EPSON ink is not "neutral" it is necessary to introduce color inks in order to create the illusion of "neutral". It is conceivable that in the future EPSON K3 black and white prints will have faded to the lowest common denominator of its three shade black ink set. These black inks are "greenish" in nature, and green is not a desirable tone in which a photographer's historical recognition should be perceived in the future. It also allows for a very misleading "interpretation" of longevity results designed around using only EPSON black inks. Very few photographers will be happy with the "tone" and "color" of using only EPSON black inks, and will necessarily introduce color inks using the EPSON ABW driver.

Alternatively, Piezography offers ink sets which are pure monochromatic tones. There is a set of seven shades available in Neutral, Sepia and Selenium. 4 shade sets are available in Warm Neutral, Sepia and Selenium. The ink sets can actually be intermixed by those seeking custom solutions. With the K6 and K7 profile system for QuadTone RIP, users can mix any combination of inks as long as they keep the shades in the proper order.

While an EPSON K3 print "looks good", it is not a substitute for a fine black and white darkroom print. Piezography K7 inks also take carbon inkjet printmaking to a further extreme. EPSON K3 inks according to their MSDS sheets contain varying amounts of dye. Piezography only uses 100% pure carbon pigment, and does so to offer the greatest historical longevity. Piezography inks are engineered to withstand fading and color changing at a specification that is below human perception. It is a remarkable standard to attain, but Piezography is designed by a photographer and printmaker who has been making fine prints for photographers and artists since 1980.

In comparison to EPSON's best attempt at black and white (K3), Piezography K7 resolves much higher detail and definition, produces a much smoother tonal scale, and prints with significantly better highlight and shadow detail. If the quality of your black and white works deserves the absolute best quality reproduction, then your work deserves Piezography K7 because it significantly exceeds the capabilities of EPSON K3 inks.

Longevity Statement

The new i-Star standard is the invention of Mark McCormick-Goodhart of Aardenburg Imaging & Archives. Mark is the founder and Director of Aardenburg Imaging & Archives (AaI&A).  He has a distinguished career in imaging science and photographic conservation and was formerly the Senior Research Photographic Scientist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. He has also worked closely with Henry Wilhelm on numerous projects including WIR's iStar comparative image analysis software that incorporates the new I* metric formulas.  Mark's i-Star testing procedure is a paradigm shift in how everyone from this point forward will consider image stability testing.

A serious problem with light fastness information on modern digital print media (notably inkjet prints) to this point has been that the test methods currently used by the imaging industry (WIR and IPI) to provide this information rely on a decades-old method used to test silver halide color photography. Traditional color photos contain just three isolated dye layers (cyan, magenta and yellow) and the fade test results are measured by densitometers not modern colorimeters or spectrophotometers. Exposed to light until just one of nine color patches fades to liberal consumer-oriented tolerances that allow as much as 35% loss in density, the entire range of color performance is then extrapolated from this single testing endpoint into a prediction of print "display life".  While this method worked reasonably well for traditional CMY color photography and consumer photofinishing expectations, it has produced inconsistent results for modern inkjet systems.  Reds, greens, blues, neutrals, near-neutrals, shadow tones, and even skin tone blends for that matter cannot be properly evaluated by the traditional test method, and those liberal tolerances used to make the display life predictions have also resulted in widely exaggerated claims by manufacturers about print life expectations.  "Easily noticeable fade"  is not  an appropriate standard for most artists, museum curators, and collectors of fine art prints.  It's time to leave this antiquated light fade testing method behind.

Understandably, AaI&A with Mark's direction is the first testing laboratory to implement the new iStar technology in an innovative, standardized, and comprehensive light fade testing program.  Unlike the current industry-sponsored light fade tests,  AaI&A light fade tests reveal the entire range of results from early loss of optical brightener activity to those colors and tones which fail quickly and those which have enormous resistance to fade as a print is displayed over time.

We were so impressed with the actual i-Star methodology and testing capabilities of AaI&A, that we decided to become the first Corporate Sponsor of Aardenburg Imaging & Archive's digital print research program.  We won't be buying tests and publishing test results directly with our corporate sponsorship because AaI&A has purposely chosen never to license any test results.  Mark believes that licensing selective test results directly for marketing purposes leads inevitably to conflicts of interest for an independent test laboratory and an inability of the consumer to judge the results in context with other products.  We agree.  So, instead we are entering into a novel collaborative relationship with AaI&A where we’ll be sponsoring memberships not tests.  

Vermont PhotoInkjet will help the AaI&A digital print research program grow by helping to fund memberships for our customers.  It's a win-win situation for everyone that will lead to a rich and growing database of independently conducted tests using the most advanced testing methods in the business and free of undue industry influence over what gets tested and what doesn't.  Our customers will have direct access not only to longevity information about ConeColor and Piezography inks, but to all other manufacturers' materials represented in the AaI&A materials database as well.  They will be able judge for themselves how our high quality yet low-cost materials perform in comparison to other products.  Our customers will also be able to make informed decisions about what  levels of fade and color shift that they are comfortable with, how to improve environmental conditions which extend print life, and how to choose wisely the printer/ink/media combinations that are best for their art reproductions and photographs.

There is one other factor that may contribute to a photographer's decision to employ pure carbon printing over EPSON Ultrachrome inks. The longevity factor for many is overwhelmingly important. EPSON ratings can not communicate color shift because the testing procedures they support do not measure color shift. We employed a preliminary testing of Piezography Sepia in comparison to EPSON ABW Sepia. While the ABW retained good density, we stopped the testing when the EPSON ABW had shifted so far magenta that the prints had lost their "monochromatic" appeal. Click on this link to see actual test targets at only 35 Wilhelm years for an ink/media combination that Wilhelm rated greater than 400 years before "easily noticeable fade" occurs.

You can read about our different ink choices by clicking here.