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Piezography question

Eden

New member
Ken:

On pizza, I take it from your question that you think my paper damage may have a different cause (head strike) than Eleanor's report. All my 3880 test prints were clean except for the identical thumb-print size on all the Type 5s until I raised the paper size setting. I've owned several Epson printers and have been fortunate never to have seen any paper damage before, so I don't know exactly how the pizza wheel marks would appear, but the Type 5 marks were just in one spot and definitely didn't look like they were made with a pizza wheel. I wonder if Eleanor has any evidence with OEM inks which would enable her to return her unit under warranty. One Epson printer I purchased didn't work smoothly out of the box and the Epson store replaced it without fuss. As soon as I get the refillable carts installed, I will know whether I will have Eleanor's problem printing the peizography inks.

On inksets, I started a few years ago with neutral on matte papers using an R1800. According to Epson, that printer, and the later 1900, had the smallest microdots of the Epson printers and it was ideal for K7. The neutral matte is very nice for portraits (very soft skin gradations) and for restoring old photographs, which I enjoyed. Neutral matte didn't give me the thrill I remember from the chemical darkroom, however, and until MPS came out I spent most of my printing time in color, getting a 7900 three years ago. Last year I read a review of a Jon Cone/Inkjetmall stand at one of the big photo shows -- I think it was in Atlanta -- and the reviewer had great praise for their display of prints using the new MPS. Since Inkjetmall is not far away in Vermont I asked the staff if I could come by and see the prints. The folks there are very friendly and professional (I took a workshop there when I first started piezography) and they brought out the set for me. I was just blown away seeing them up close. After studying the different mixes of inksets and papers among the Atlanta prints, I decided on inksets of selenium glossy and sel/warm neutral split tone and I began using Type 5 paper. I love the selenium on Exhibition Fiber for such subjects as snow scenes (we have plenty of those) and sea foam (out your way). The selenium/warm neutral split tone has great depth and tonal range on Type 5 for subjects I've printed recently such as spring ferns, stone walls, and baby pictures. It wasn't long before I wanted a second printer at the ready. The refillable cart sets for Epson desktop printers (2880 and below) are really affordable, so it's easy to change around and make your own mixes. Empty cart sets for mine are $29. I just bought a sample set filled with carbon inks for $120 and will try that tomorrow. Since I already have neutral inks, I have also made up a special edition set by buying bottles of just two additional shades. My plan is to select one or perhaps two for the 3800 and have the others available on the inexpensive 1900 depending on what seems appropriate for the type of image. I'll let you know how the carbon and special edition mixes work out.

On workflow, since LR4 came out I've been doing more of my processing there, including grayscale, and all of my printing to QuadTone RIP. Since I understood LR operates in ProPhoto RGB (gamma 1.8), and QTR has to be prepped in 2.2, I got confused among all of LR's VCs, softproofs, master copies, saved copies, Photoshop edits 1, 2, and 3, etc. so I sent my question to Jon Cone's blog and he posted a very helpful reply today: Lightroom 4 and Piezography | PiezoPress
 

kdphotography

Well-known member
Hi Lynn,

I share your excitement with the new piezography MPS glossy inksets! If I had the room, I'd gladly add to my collection of printers. But in light of Eleanor's experience, I would be hesitant to add the 38** series, limited print carriage width notwithstanding. I think Eleanor has spent quite a bit of time tearing apart her 7800 and 3880, to the point that if the salaries for Epson techs were just a bit more, she could take on another career path... :ROTFL:
Btw, the pizza wheel mark issue for 38/3880 series printers is apparently not limited to Cone inks as there are complaints using Epson OEM inks too, but Eleanor's experience is that the marks are only an issue with the mps piezography inksets. I hope there is a workaround solution for her printer.

There is indeed something special about what the piezography K7 MPS inkset imparts to B&W images. It's changed my approach and perspective towards B&W fine art printing.

ken
 

Teager

New member
Well I have the 4800 Piezography 2 conversion up and running. I have not had any issues so far. It did take 3 power cleanings to get it to start up right, but after that all is smooth. I have not seen any of the pizza wheel marks but have noticed that I have to let the prints dry about 18-24 hours before doing a GO coat or I get smearing. Just waiting to get more custom curves back before really playing with it more. On the one curve I have for it I have seen a dramatic opening up of the shadows. It looks very promising so far.
 

kdphotography

Well-known member
Michael, I haven't heard of any pizza wheel issues for any printers other than the 38** series. I prefer to let my prints sit for several hours (or overnight) before applying the GO. I use a blow dryer on the cool setting for several minutes on the print which works well if I need to hurry things along a bit to apply the GO.

I would enjoy seeing some of your Piezography 2 prints!
 
R

RogerB

Guest
I was about two key-clicks away from ordering an MPS system for a 3880 I have not been using but now I'm very concerned about the pizza wheel issue.
I feel fortunate to have run across this forum with a group of knowledgeable contributors. I eagerly await any updates to this matter. Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences.
 

eleanorbrown

New member
Hi everyone, I think it would help if I try to clarify again my issues with the 3880. First let me say that my warm neutral/selenium split MPS prints that were printed on my 3880 using rear manual feed that do not exhibit pizza wheels are stunning. Not all prints show pizza wheels (ie: prints with lots of detail, sky with light and mid tone areas, etc.) The prints that have issues with the pizza wheels are those that have smoother, mid to darker tones with darker ink lay down. In these prints the pizza wheels produce a print that I can neither sell nor send to a gallery for an exhibition.

There is NOTHING, I repeat nothing...wrong with my printer. Before I installed the MPS inks I ran off a pile 1 inch high of prints using the epson inks on all the papers I would be using for MPS printing. Not one of these epson ink prints showed pizza wheel marks that one could see with the naked eye. I finally got out my 8x loupe and looked at the epson prints with the loupe in bright light and what I saw was tiny pin pricks from the pizza wheels..mind you under 8x loupe. My 3880 does not have anything wrong with it and with the epson inks the prints looked flawless (all using rear feed of course after careful head alignment).

I read an online post yesterday by Eric Chan regarding the pizza wheel issues comparing the epson R2880 and the 3880 printers and Eric said that the pizza wheels were not as evident on the R2880 printer as on the 3880 so that printer is probably better for MPS printing. So, to recap...you will NOT get pizza wheels on all MPS printed on the 3880 but it's a hit or miss thing...depending on the tones and subject matter of your digital file. I recently printed an image for an exhibition that I really wanted to print using MPS inks...The image, one of my Snow Shadows series had some darker smooth tones in the image and the pizza wheels showed big time. I ended up printing Epson ABW on my 9880 printer instead. So I hope this clarifies the issues with the 3880 a little better. There may be lots of folks printing MPS out there on 3800/3880 who don't examine their prints as closely as I do and are satisfied. I just happen to be very particular and I see with my naked eye pizza wheels that might be a non issue with others.
 

Teager

New member
Well, i finally got the P2 system up and running after many difficulties. The main issue was using CS6 and OSX lion. Dana came up with a solution that yields good results We had to convert to grey gamma 1.8 and use Photoshop manages color set to sRGB 2.1 with relative colormetric and black point on to get the prints to come out. I now have the matte/gloss neutral combo running on a 4800 with about 12 curves. I would like to comment that I have not had pizza wheel issues as of yet but am noticing that the drying time is in excess of 3 days before I can put a gloss overcoat on any of the glossy papers.
 

kdphotography

Well-known member
Three days? Egads, Michael! Have you tried (or does it even work) using a blowdryer on the low and cool settings? That's the recommendation for using the K7 MPS inkset when you want to speed things along. A few minutes is all it takes, otherwise I let me prints set several hours before the gloss overcoat.

I look forward to seeing some of your Piezography 2 prints!

ken
 

Eden

New member
Update on the 3880: As noted above, I bought a new 3880 as a second dedicated piezography printer before I saw Eleanor's posting. Warned by that, I tested extensively with the original inks before converting, and I've also spent several weeks experimenting with different Cone inksets in my 1900 before purchasing the more expensive 3880 refillable carts and a separate chip set (I wanted to keep the Epson set intact).

In short, the prints are flawless with the papers I'm using (so far Cone type 5, Epson exhibition fiber and premium lustre, Ilford gold fiber silk. I don't plan to use thicker media). I've examined the finished prints carefully under a loupe and a bank of Solux floods and can find no surface marks. The platen gap setting is Wider. All prints and GO step are from rear manual feed. (Once when I tried top feed for GO I got a roller mark.) When I saw the first 16 x 20 prints I was glad I had gotten the 3880 rather than a smaller printer.

The one problem I had with first prints was the Gloss Optimizer laying down on the white paper margins but not on the inked image. The result was that the ink looked bronzed and even showed what looked like smudges. The border between inked image and white paper was very apparent on my test image of step squares and a rectangular gradient. I emailed a case to Inkjetmall tech support and Jon Cone replied immediately advising me to check the white canvas image I was using for the GO to be certain that it was RGB 255/255/255. I had been printing only from Lightroom for these first prints, and I didn't know the answer until I went back to Photoshop to count the pixels. Apparently I had somehow picked up a corrupted white canvas image in my Lightroom Library module and gone right to the Print module without noticing. As soon as I made sure I had a valid 255/255/255 image the GO went down evenly from both Photoshop and Lightroom and the prints looked perfect. I overprinted a second full GO coat on the prints that looked bad and the problems vanished. In retracing where I had gone wrong, I noticed that even with a valid white canvas the histogram is blank in Lightroom's Library module, so it is easy to go right to the Print module without being certain you have a canvas which will trigger a full GO. If you go to the Develop module with a valid canvas and look carefully at the histogram there, you will see a thin white line at the extreme right (255). I find it's easier to see clearly whether the white canvas is correct if I print the GO from Photoshop, while taking advantage of Lightroom's convenient Print module for the ink image itself.

As for drying the ink before applying GO, I hold the print up by an edge and wave a hair dryer gently around both sides for about 5 minutes at a distance which is not too hot for my fingers. With larger paper I'll also lay it on a clean surface a wave the dryer over both sides. I've seen no problem with this procedure. Humidity in my printing area is about 62.

When I was testing with the original inks before converting, I did have head strikes with the Epson inks and both type 5 and EEF paper. Inkjetmall advised me to leave the paper out overnight to adjust to the print area humidity and I have had no repeats. The Wider platen gap setting has also helped.

My suggestions to Roger who is considering converting his 3880 are (1) test it thoroughly to be sure everything is working perfectly before buying the refillable carts and inks, (2) if you're unsure about which inks send a couple of images to Inkjetmall for prints, and (3) save your used Epson carts for the chips. For anyone thinking of experimenting with piezography for the first time, it's useful to know that, although a color print from a small printer won't match the quality of a several-thousand-dollar pro model, an inexpensive 13" Epson desktop printer, using a $29 refillable cart set and spraying seven shades of ink with Cone curves and Gloss Overlay, will lay down as beautiful an image as as that pro printer which takes four good friends to move into your workspace. The ink will be your most expensive purchase and you can use that in larger printers later if you like what you see. I've made Epson ABW comparison prints on both this 3880 and my 7900, and I've found the MPS prints bring the images much more vividly to life.

Lynn
 

kdphotography

Well-known member
Well, I couldn't avoid the magic of B&W fine art printing and have finally converted a new Epson 9890 printer to a K7 B&W MPS Piezography glossy and matte printer. After the demise of my 9800 piezography printer (my fault, but she should now be working elsewhere!) I couldn't go back to normal B&W off of my 9900.

I had a minor hiccup in conversion, a bad cartridge chip which was easily replaced. I had to do more than six power cleans and clean the capping station to purge all the original Epson color inks used to initially charge and inspect the printer. I'm still doing some minor tweaking in the print process. Still experimenting, but it seems that at least some of the older curves that I used for my 9800 (actually 7880/9880 curves worked better) work on the 9890, or at least are near indistinguishable when used on the 9890.

I'm looking forward to being able to use the gloss optimizer capability of the 9890 K7 printer on select color portraits printed on the 9900. Capture Integration in Carmel is planned for February 2013 and the goal is to do some B&W piezography printing!

ken
 

Teager

New member
I've been so impressed with the system so far and my students have loved it, we have about 14 working curves for the P2 system now and I am now thinking of converting an old 4800 to a digital negative printer. I still have my eyes on the special edition ink set though. Congrats on the new conversion Ken. The lasts prins I saw of yours convinced me to do a conversion.
 

wattsie

New member
I have been using the MPS K7 inks on an epson 3800 for a year or more now. I mainly use Jon's Type 5 paper. I always use the manual rear feed and have the platen gap set to wide. Under proper lighting and on close inspection I can't see any pizza wheels or other imperfections.

Also I suggest people give Roy Harrington's QTR Print Tool a try for printing. It takes all the nonsense and confusion out of the problems with the colour management pipeline between Adobe and Apple which currently exist. You can trial it for free.
 

jlm

Workshop Member
Ken is the devil!

i have my 4880 running with glossy selenium inks. took three power cleanings. am using manual feed from the back and fiddling around with papers to get a cool black as i don't want the warm tone. so far so good.

trying epson ex fiber, Cone type5, with supplied glossy profiles Cone is the warmest.

also tried Canson RAG Photogaphique (only Canson i had on hand) with the Canson Baryta Satin profile, so far the coolest

still to try:
have Hannemule Glossy fine art Baryta (is this for the supplies 4880-MPS-HANptoRagBaryta profile)
harmon Gloss FB AI: (is this for 4880-MPS-HarmonGIFbWt profile?)
also Ilford GFS ( no profles listed)
and Innova F type Gloss (no profiles listed)


i assume the MPS profiles are the relevant ones for gloss optimizer? and the list is small
 

kdphotography

Well-known member
John,

The MPS designation does indicate it is a curve for glossy piezography printing, so the GO will need to also be applied afterwards.

Don't be afraid to try the curves listed under other Epson printers! For your 4880, I would first look towards the 3880 and 7880/9880 MPS curves to see if there are any listed that are suitable. You can also try MPS curves listed for the 49/79/9900 as the ink shades are in the same positions. With K7 B&W piezography, it's all about tones and not being anal (me and Don) about using the correct custom icc profile as you would for color printing. In other words, you can free-flow a lot more with K7 B&W piezography and concentrate on what looks good as an image maker. I've found that you can *borrow* from other printer curves for the same media. If nothing is listed for a media you want to use, a good place to start is using the Cone 5 curve to see if that works and I would do this before generating a custom curve and spending money.

ken

p.s. Avoid the 9800 curves----I found these didn't work well, even on my 9800.
 

jlm

Workshop Member
feeler to see if there is any data out there, but i am not so fond of the sepia like tone i am still getting.
4880, selenium MPS glossy inks, and tried a couple of papers: Ilford GFS, Cone type 5,

what i am looking for is a cold black set.

any comments?
 

kdphotography

Well-known member
John--is it sepia or the warmth of the print/tones?

Maybe try different ink shades or probably better to select a different ink set (neutral, special edition, split tone...). Brighter white papers will help, but can mean also using those with OBAs.

Cone had a "portfolio black" ink but it used dye, and not archival...you could try experimenting with using different ink formulations. For example, you can use Epson's mK instead of Cones mK, as long as the correct shades match up for the right slots.

Assuming your selenium MPS is installed correctly--- it sounds like you're going to have to change to a different ink set to get what you want...

ken
 
I have been using Canson Platine and Infinity Baryta with an MPS Selenium/WN configuration. I love the prints - find that the image tone of Platine and Baryta is similar (both cooler than Cone 5 and a bit warmer than Epson EF).

The Platine has a slightly warmer paper base (due to no OBA's) and slightly more textured surface than Infinity Baryta. Because of the surface texture on Platine, I was not happy with the surface after GO was applied - a little to "heavy" looking.

To fix this, I refined Cone's regular GO curve to use less GO density - Jon describes how to do this in his latest Piezography manual that he released on January (on his website). The standard GO curve has the GO density at 45%; after some trial and error, I found that 20% to 15% is perfect for Platine. With this reduced GO, the print surface is much smoother and has no bronzing....

All in all, a beautiful system. Canson Infinity Baryta and Platine are my standard Piezo papers - I use Cone 5 when i want something warmer. I am still looking for something cooler and have used EEF. I am not fully satisfied with it, though. I am now testing some of Ilford's new Gold Mono Silk - so far, nice image tone and beautiful surface. Will take more reference prints before I have any findings to share.
 

jlm

Workshop Member
so far, and i am not getting night and day differences
i did some rather extensive testing. all printed from the same image, K7 selenium MPS inkset, glossy only, epson 4880.

all of these were in the sepia-like tonal range with the most neutral so far ranked first: first two were rogues, however.

GO on all of them

paper/profile:

canson platine, canson baryta satin (a matte paper, but came out cool, but not a contender, otherwise, as i am using glossy inks)
canson paltine, ex fiber even cooler, same problems

glossy or satin papers: first group a toss up, most cool being red river, but not a good neutral yet

red river ultrapro satin: ex fib, canson Baryta, harmon gfw type 5
museo silver rag, harmon GFW
museo silver rag, ex fiber
ex fiber, ex fiber profile

the rest were all warmer:


ilford GFS: ex fib
harmon GFW, harmon gfw
hannemuhle FA baryta, han rag baryta MPS
canson rag phootgraphique, canson baryta satin
canson baryta, canso baryta satin
innova Fgloss; ex fib
type 5, type 5 (warmest of all)
 
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