Selenium Tone PiezoTone Review
by Martin Wesley

I received sample bottles of ConeTech's new selenium hue PiezoTone ink about three weeks ago for Beta testing and have been using them steadily with a CIS in an Epson 1280 for the past two weeks.

As far as my own personal tastes go, this is the best grayscale ink set I have seen and I prefer it to anything else I have tried. The hue and the chromatic complexity of the prints I have been making over the past few days is indeed right in the range that we commonly associate with selenium toned silver fiber prints. They have slightly cool highlights and a touch of magenta in the midtones and shadows. I have toned silver prints on Ilford, Kodak and Oriental hanging on my living room wall and, while the Selenium PT prints are not an exact match to any of them, they fit right in. Only their matte surface gives them away as not being air dried silver fiber and mixed with matte surface silver fiber would be undetectable as inkjet.

I would not call the Selenium PT inks "neutral" and probably would not like them so much if they were. The standard selenium toned silver fiber print that we tend to think of as neutral is in fact not neutral at all. The nature of the specific emulsion, the color of the paper base and the manner in which the toning was done results in a print that is subtly varies in hue as well as tone. This variation that I call chromatic complexity is what makes silver prints so wonderful and so alive. Even book publishers know that a true monotone does not adequately represent a photograph and quality books are done using 2 to 4 inks of different hue to simulate what is happening in a silver print.

My primary paper is Hahnemuhle Photo Rag and the Selenium PT works beautifully with this paper. I think the tone on EAM may be a bit better though. This is my standard proofing paper but the difference in tone may pull me back in that direction although Photo Rag is probably more archival, has a nicer texture and brighter white, there seems to be less warming on the EAM and the initial hue is just a bit more pleasing.

I also tried prints on Hahnemühle German Etching and William Turner, Crane Museo, Legion Photo Matte and Eclipse Satine. The finished look of the print varies a great deal with the paper you use and this is good news since it means you can get a lot of different looks just by switching paper. The very white Legion Photo Matte and Eclipse Satine (Jon can we please, please have a paper profile for Eclipse!?!?) show more blue and greater variation in hue overall. The neutral paper base lets all the complex tones in the inks show through. The Legion Photo Matte is too bright for my taste but the Eclipse looks very interesting. It seems to do much better with the Selenium PT than it did with the original Piezo inks. I tried the Orwell profile but it was not quite right in the lower tones. On the German Etching and Wil. Turner the prints were excellent but the cream-colored paper base cancels out a good deal of the coolness in the highlights giving a more neutral look. Museo is very pleasant with this ink set. Some of the coolness is lost but it still a very nice alternative to Photo Rag and EAM.

The Dmax of the Selenium PT is identical to the Warm Neutral. Which is to say very high. On EAM I recorded values in the 1.71 range and on Photo Rag at 1.80. These were taken from wedges printed using the Piezo driver. The Photo Rag density is getting very close to silver print Dmax. So close that the difference does not jump out at you like it does when the inkjet print Dmax is down at 1.6. Since it appears that the black of the Selenium PT is the same as the Warm-Neutral it should be possible to obtain even higher Dmax values using other drivers. With the Warm-Neutral I was getting Dmax values in the 1.88 to 1.90 range and values of 1.94 have been reported.

Regarding fading I have no data and I don't know how it will compare to other ink sets. Jon has said it is undergoing RIT testing and did well on in-house Xenon fade testing. I do notice some warming. It takes about 12 to 24 hours for the prints to "settle" and achieve Dmax and initial color. This is similar to what I saw with the WN-PT. The change is not very large and you can accurately assess your prints out of the printer reasonably well once they are dry. After a few days the Photo Rag prints did show some visible warm shifting but it seems slight and not objectionable. The EAM showed much less warm shifting. This is pretty much in keeping with the other ink sets I have tried.

Metamerism seems very slight and not at all unpleasant. In tungsten and halogen light the prints are warmer as you would expect and the magenta predominates a bit. In fluorescent, daylight and mixed tungsten/daylight the prints are more neutral. Looks great under all light sources that I tried.

Like the WN-PiezoTones I experienced no clogging problems or green casts. The CIS started right up immediately after vacuum loading and 4 nozzle cleanings, and has passed every nozzle check since.

At this point my favorite inks for use with the Piezo driver are Selenium-PiezoTone, Warm Neutral-PiezoTone, MIS-FS and MIS-FS Neutral in that order. For me and my own tastes, I think the PiezoTones are the better way to go. I especially recommend the Selenium-PT to people who are transitioning from traditional silver fiber printing to inkjet. While you will still need to get used to the matte surface of the papers, you will not have to go through a big hue adjustment.

All in all the Selenium-PiezoTone inks represent a really stunning addition to what is available for inkjet printing. With the reduced price of the Piezo driver and these new inks, I strongly suggest you give them a try. We each have our own likes and preferences but I will be very surprised if this does not become a top contender for the most popular ink set.

Martin Wesley

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