Jon Cone's Black & White digital timeline

According to Peter Alpers, former Business Line Manager/Visual Arts of IRIS Graphics, Inc. "Cone is widely regarded as a pioneer in digital printmaking and one of its most knowledgeable and skilled practitioners. From my point of view, he has materially shaped the digital-printmaking industry."

Jon Cone has been providing innovative black and white inkjet techniques and methodology since 1993. As IRIS Graphics sole development partner in Fine Arts, Cone Editions developed several innovations culminating in 1999's prestigious award from PDN/PIX as Digital Innovator of the year. DigitalPlatinum for IRIS remains the crowning achievement of Jon Cone's black and white technology. Back in development for desktop deployment, watch this page for future announcements.

1993 - Graytone100 for IRIS
Jon Cone writes Graytone100, first digital black and white software for IRIS Graphics 3000 series printers. Produced in DOS, this series of simple ink LUTs produces neutral grayscale prints using IRIS Industrial Design cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks without the striation and rainbowing associated with the printers.

1994 - ConeTech WGFA longevity inks for IRIS 3000 series printers
First super gamut long lasting inks designed for IRIS printers. Top ranked in 1994 for longevity, along side Lyson FA inks, but without the poor red performance associated with the Lyson inks. WGFA inks and Graytone100 become an archival platform for serious black and white photography.

1995 - ConeTech RGFA reduced gamut archival inks for IRIS 3000 series printers.
ConeStudio's ink mixing lab turns out a novel idea for generating grayscale prints in a wide variety of tones. WGFA cyan, magenta, and yellow inks are mixed with black to produce gray component inks which can be mixed via LUTs to produce effects ranging from warm tone; cool tone; neutral tone; and cold tone.

ConeTech Multitone for IRIS released - system incorporating ConeTech RGFA inks and ConeTech Multitone IRIS LUTs. First inkjet printing system devoted exclusively to the production of black and white photographic printing. Software runs under Windows 3.1.

1996 - ConeTech Unitone for IRIS released. This novel approach allows for the simultaneous printing of color and black and white prints from a single IRIS 3000 series printer. Unitone for IRIS is a software which combines ink LUTs with firmware Matrices to produce a wide variety of monochromatic effects using archival CMYK inks from ConeTech, Lyson or IRIS Graphics inks. A simple user interface allows for infinite custom ink mixing ranging from warm tone; cool tone; neutral tone; selenium tone, and cold tone. There is no perceptible evidence that individual cyan, magenta, and yellow components are used. Software runs under Windows95. Updated to Windows 98.

1997/8 DigitalPlatinum for IRIS
Jon Cone develops the most advanced monochromatic printing system ever produced for inkjet printers. DigitalPlatinum for IRIS combines a proprietary ConeTech ink system of multi-chromatic blacks and a software interface to replicate traditional palladium process. Extremely stable ConeTech IRIS inks combine with proprietary software which produces dot-less printing. Debuted at Photo Plus Expo East in NYC in 1998, this process becomes the first optical quality digital process. Produced entirely within the mixing and software lab of ConeStudio, the process gains Jon Cone the prestigious Digital Innovator of 1999 award by PDN-PIX. Jon Cone and Carl Weese combine to recreate the Ziatype Palladium process in ConeStudio as a DigitalPlatinum variation.

Jon Cone named Digital Innovator of the Year by Photo District News.
Read about it here.

1999 IRIS Graphics closes its IRIS 3000 series production line.

2000 - Piezography®BW.
ConeTech releases Piezography®BW software and inks for EPSON printers as an inexpensive desktop system, PiezographyBW is an optical quality monochromatic system. In sharp contrast to $123,000 IRIS 3047 printers, Piezography®BW works with $119 and higher EPSON printers. The Photoshop plug-in software allows for direct use from the most popular image editing software.

2002 - PiezoTone™ inks.
PiezographyBW inks were introduced in March, 2000 as a carbon pigment/dye mixture in a strong co-solvent base. Although contemporary at its release, it has been replaced by a new generation of quad black inks offering significantly better technology resulting in greatly increased longevity, color stability, and printer performance. This new ink family is called ConeTech PiezoTone and replaces the now discontinued PiezographyBW inks. PiezoTone inks are a 100% pure pigment ink and are offered in 4 different hue/tone families.
Read article about Jon Cone "Inside Cone's head" (pdf)

2003 Piezography®BW for Canon.
Another first! PiezoTone inks formulated for Canon are the first pigment formula for Canon. PiezoTones for Canon offer the advantage of printability without dusting or bronzing on glossy.

2004 - iQuads™.
InkjetMall offers personalized monochromatic ICC profiling of user's individual printers to achieve a higher state of perfection. iQuads allows for unique differences between the user's printer, and the printers which were utilized in the generic profiling process. Taking it to another level, this technology permits unparalleled accuracy on an individual basis.

2005 - Piezography® Neutral K7™.
A truly achromatic inkset for monochromatic printing. Designed to be L*a*b neutral to the human eye, each of the seven dilutions will not reflect color. This new formulation uses smaller pigment particles of carbon which have been custom ground and polished to achieve a neutral state. The vehicle in which the pigment is suspended further enhances longevity while at the same time permits this ink to have unprecedented "slipperyness" in the tiny ink channels of the latest EPSON® printers. Piezography Neutral K7 can be used with QuadTone RIP and StudioPrint RIP. Available for EPSON R800/R1800, 2100/2200, 2400, 4000, 4800, 7600, 9600. A K6 (six dilution) set is available in Universal position cartridges for EPSON 7000, 7500, 9000 and 9500 printers. Up to seven dilutions in Universal position carts are available for Roland, Mutoh and Mimaki printers. A new version of the D'Vinci System for Roland 12 ink cart printers is being readied which will include Piezography Neutral K7 inks and the upcoming ConeColor pure pigment double-resinated color ink set - for the ultimate in super-large-format color and monochromatic printing.

2006 - Piezography® SplitTone™.
A truly novel way to produce images which split from Neutral highlights into Sepia shadows or any combination of the new Piezography K7 inks such as the upcoming Selenium and Warm Neutral. Competing systems which do variable toning do not take advantage of the higher quality of printing with seven dilutions of ink. Instead those system utilize only three or four of the ink positions to mix inks into variable toned prints. Piezography SplitTone achieves the effect but does so by partitioning the image into seven parts to create the smoothest possible print. How? Each of the seven shades of Piezography Neutral K7 has the same precise density as its counterpart in the other versions of Sepia K7, Selenium K7 and Warm Neutral K7. You can define how the split tone is created, and still be assured of the smoothest possible print.