hi, I use Methodology 3 to print digital negative for Two years and have the Piezography Digital Negative inks installed (with shades 2.5 and 4.5)，P2M-PZDN-X800-Meth3-1_8v3.quad is curve I used ,my print is EPSON R3000.my Alt-Process is palladium print.I only have a scanner,did not have Spectrophotometers or Film Densitometers .Now I want to try PiezoDN。
I read your F.A.Q,they said use Meth3 curves inside of CURVES/PZDN_to_PiezoDN,which curve I should use? PiezoDN-X8-Meth3-1_8v3-P2 or PiezoDN-X8-Meth3-1_8v2?
I also read a way to calibrate PiezoDN with the 21STEP_SCANNER_TOOL Excel file. can I use the curve above that I choose .then linearize my .quad? can you give me more information about how to converte from from Methodology 3 to PiezoDN .
I’ve done a lot of work with the old K6 Meth 3 and R3000.
I can’t compare the quality with the recent ink set. But it’s working w/o any problem. The different from you is that I’ve a spectrometer.
I’ve now used it for the two historical processes: Pd and carbon print. Both with excellent results. You should of course have control of the processes themselves before you start.
My aim is to continue with the new inks as soon as my bottelse are empty.
The big difference with the old curves is they assume you print a negative as a negative. They need to be converted to fit the PDN calibration. That means the conversion to a negatives will be done by the curves, or if you want to say the curves are now inverted compared to before. In the downloads there are curves that have been inverted. (I checked this myself by wrote a small script in Matlab and this was true. I wanted to convince myself and understand PDN curves) A remark is when you prepare your positive you need to insert a black background in the tif file, otherwise you will spend a lot of extra ink on nothing. Also you need to reverse the photo horistontslly for a Pd, Pt, albumin, salt etc. For a simple carbon print this shouldn’t be done.
The whole method they have worked out for us is quite simple to follow and the final prints will be beautiful. I’ve checked other negative methods but this one is the best for my way of working.
They will not be available for the 1500W. They were built very specifically for x800 and x880 series heads and not for the consumer-level printers such as the 1500W and the curves are now deprecated and replaced with PiezoDN curves. R&D has officially stopped on v1 legacy PZDN (shade 2.5 and 4.5) curves.
PiezoDN offers a starting point for making really good digital negatives but we are very aware that every single darkroom and exposure setup is vastly different. One person’s exposing unit and chemicals will make an entirely different print off the same base curve. There are too many “hand-made” variables at play to perfectly calibrate for multiple darkrooms.
So PiezoDN requires a spectro or scanner or some form of calibration device. It also requires exacting darkroom control and knowledge about darkroom printing. In the introduction and FAQ of PiezoDN we make this very clear. PiezoDN is limited by the skill and practice of the darkroom printer and is not push-button by any means.
@Christer Törnkvist and Keymaster , thank you for your helping very much.another question about linearize .quad.Because only have a scanner Epson V370,I have to use 21step scanner tool excel file to linearize PiezoDN-X8-Meth3-1_8v3-P2.quad.here is my process:(sorry for my poor English！ )
print a 21 step target(piezeDN\images\ PiezoDN_Targets\ PiezoDN-21step-DTP70.tif) and print in the darkroom.
Then scan it without color adjustment and set highlight and darkness In Photoshop.
read the 21 tones and record the L* number in the step scanner. Here a question, record the L number is not correct In my opinion,because 21 step was created by K number ,form 0,5,10,15,20 to 100%.the L* number is not one-to-one match with the K number. In 21step scanner tool excel file ,Target linear L=100,95….,this number is K number in fact.but L from scanner is L number. Do I understand right? Or if I need to build 21 step with L* number.
Save the spreadsheet as a tab delimited document,then Select both the .quad and .txt files and drag together over the QTR-LinearizeQuad droplet to make the new -lin.quad.These steps is right? Could you give me more advices!
@ Christer Törnkvist , I also read your other Postings, you say bulid ICC file to linearize your .quad,that is a great job I am interesting .coule you please tell me more step about how to creat a ICC file,thank you very much!
>>> Then do a noise reduction with Camera Raw Filter in photoshop (look at the instructions in the 21step tool).
If you open the “Info” tab in photoshop you will see where you can switch from Grayscale to Lab. Do this and you will see the L* value of your swatches from 100 to 0. K value is from 256 to 0 but L* is simply that number divided by 2.56.
ICC profiles can be created as a final step (after linearizing) to add some contrast matching between the print and the monitor. If you look at the instructions for PiezoDN it described the process.
Fully understand. On page 77 of the manual ‘Initial .Quad Choices and limiting’ it does say about using a pre-calibrated curve as a starting point for a given process. There is no suite of curves for the 1500W available though. I don’t expect all the work to be done and appreciate it’s a lot to design for each printer. I want to understand and control the whole process of calibration. I just hope using a spectro is more elegant than some of the other digi neg solutions I’ve struggled to calibrate in the past.
A question about printing the ‘limiter’ target. Is it actually ok to blow dry the target as outlined in the manual? Someone I know using WN Piezo inks for negatives said that the density of his highlights were blown out when blow dried compared with leaving to dry overnight.