Grainy highlights and FRUSTRATED!

PiezoDN Digital Negatives
1

I did a search about grain problems and most of the posts here were from several years back, and I was unclear about the best ways to solve issues with grainy highlights extending somewhat into the mid-tones. I’m using my new 3880, yes that’s right I actually found a brand spanking new 3880 thru an Amazon reseller; still in original box and all the tape and original packing materials, although it did cost me about twice the original cost and twice what a P800 was selling for about a year ago and what a P900 cost now. I went to the extra expense so I could use it as a piezography printer, primarily for digital negatives as my 1400 and R1800 recently died on me. I’m using Pictorico Ultra Premium media, and currently attempting to calibrate and linearize using the Ziatype process and plan on using other alternative processes such as cyanotype and who knows what else in the future, maybe even some silver prints. I’m currently using the selenium P2 inset, although I’m wondering from some of the other posts here I’ve read in this forum if maybe I should switch to the Pro inkset; your recommendations please? I also purchased the Pro Edition of the Software, so I’d have all of the tools available to me.

A little history, I’m not new to digital negatives or making fine prints using QTR, I’ve been in pursuit of the ultimate digital negative for about the past 6 months or so and has occupied virtually all my free time in that time period; not complaining, that’s just my dedication to my art and I don’t mind doing whatever it takes to get the best negatives possible; although it’s starting to wear on me. Before that I had done quite a bit of pure carbon printing using a 1400 on uncoated cotton rag paper (Arches Hot Press), mixing my own 100% carbon inks and using and calibrating with OTR creating the most beautiful prints I’ve ever made, to include silver and palladium. So, the point being, for the past several months I have been mixing my own UV blocking dye based inks to print my own negatives with mixed success, first on a 1400 then a R1800, using several other methods and software programs. The main reason I decided to switch and give Piezography a try was I kept running into issues with calibration and linearization. It’s been somewhat frustrating at times, but I’ve learned a great deal concerning all of these matters in the process. Now with a professional grade printer and all of the tools at my disposal I’m ready to put all of my failures behind me and finally be productive again; at least that is my hope.

Sorry to bore anyone reading this with all of the details above, but I felt I needed to explain my experience and where I’m coming from in order for those that can to give me the best advice possible. Back to my issue with grainy highlights and upper mid-tones, to me it looks somewhat like 35mm Tri-X developed in Rodinal; not a bad look, but not what I’m after since I’ll be scanning 6x7 medium format and 5x7 negatives. As I mentioned above I had linearization and calibration issues with the methods I was using with the 1400 and R1800; however, I never had problems with smoothness of tones, gradations and grain. I understand that the 1400 and R1800 print with a higher resolution with 2880 super and a 1.5 picoliter droplet size verses the 3.5 picoliter droplet size of the 3880, but I don’t feel this is the issue, as I can see the resolution of the 3880, printing some calibration images on film and viewing with a loupe. The resolution, rendering of detail and smoothness of tone is apparent with the 3880, although not quite as good as the 1400, it is still very good and I don’t believe it should cause problems with grain. Although I am hopeful that the Piezography folks will be able to support the new Epson Eco-Tank ET-8550 in the near future, as Jon had mentioned in his last newsletter, while it’s still in production, since it has the same droplet size as the 1400.

If you think about it, when you see grain in a print, you’re not actually seeing the grain in the original negative, whether it be silver or digital, rather you are seeing the spaces between the grains of silver, or droplets of ink, where light is allowed to pass between the grains, or droplets; and the light passing through these “holes” prints as black in a print. I know that’s rather simplistic, but I never really thought of it like that until recently with my experience in printing digital negatives. So it’s the same with a digital negative as with a silver negative, the little black specks one sees in the final print aren’t caused by black silver grains or ink specks on the negative, but rather it’s the holes or spaces that are left between the specks or droplets of ink that causes the black specks appearing as grain in the final print. That being the case, it seems to me the best way to get rid of grain is to use less of the darker inks and more of the lightest shades necessary to produce the same density and “fill in the holes, or spaces”, so to speak. Perhaps I’m wrong, but it doesn’t seem to be so much of an issue of droplet size, within reason, but rather how solid of a pattern one can print, printing with the highest volume of the lightest shade, or shade combinations, of ink necessary to produce a given density, with the least amount space left between the tiny droplets of ink creating a more solid pattern. Please inform me if my assumptions are wrong. Would it be possible to achieve enough density for platinum/palladium printing without the use of the HD PK channel?

At this point what do you believe is my best option, or options, to produce the best possible, and hopefully grain free negatives? Would it be better to switch to the Pro ink set? Other settings I’ve been using are as follows:

Custom paper settings:
Paper Type: Matte/Thin
Platen Gap: Narrow (although I saw it suggested to use Standard in another post and haven’t tried yet)
Thickness Pattern: set to 1
Paper Feed Adjust A&B: both set to 0.00% (I’m assuming these settings are for if you’re having banding issues?)
Drying Time: set to 0.0 sec

Also, I have been using the front feed in order to eliminate the possibility of pinwheel marks. I did see a post where it was recommended to use the rear feed and not the front feed; is this still the case, and if so, why is that better than using the front feed? I am concerned about pinwheels, but guess I should try and see if that will be an issue with my printer or not.

I do apologize for writing a book here, but I just wanted to lay it all out on the table; and I hope that some of my comments may help some other poor souls having the same issues!

Thanks and I do appreciate anyone that takes the time to read my comments and offer any advice they may have concerning the issues I’m having!

Finally, I’d like to volunteer my services if there is still a beta testing group out there and need some additional input.

Best regards,

Randy

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You absolutely have to use HD PK (not MK) for your darkest ink. Otherwise you will get grain in the highlights.

You need to set your platen to narrow.

You need to do a paper thickness and paper feed speed calibration.

You need to make sure that you feed from the top not the front. If you feed from the front you will have max platen gap no matter what.

You also need to add a restrainer (aka, something that makes your process a little less sensitive to light) in your chemistry so you can have slightly thinner negatives to bring some more of your mid-tone inks into the HL’s of the print. This is important. A digital negative the prints grainer (after figuring out all the variables above) generally is requiring very dense negs.

-Walker

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I believe the P2-PiezoDN-Ziatype.quad curve eliminates the possibility of printing with HD MK, am I right, since the K channel where the MK is set to 0 and the HD PK is set with the yellow channel. I also noticed the the GO in the LLK channel is turned off in the current curves as well.

I did have the platen gap set to narrow, although I did feed from the front as outlined in one of Keith’s articles in order to eliminate pinwheels; so I’ll give it a try and hopefully I won’t get the pinwheel marks I’ve had problems with in the past with other printers.

I did do a paper thickness calibration and the best setting indicated was 1. I wasn’t aware that there is a paper feed speed calibration test, didn’t see one outlined in Epson’s manual; how would you go about testing for this?

Does Paper Type setting matter, choices are Matte/Thick, Matte//Thin, Photo Paper and finally Fine Art Paper.? I had mine set to Matte/Thin, although I may try the Photo Paper setting,

When you say I need to add restrainer, I assume you are talking about adding more contrasting agent in the form of either Potassium Chlorate, Ammonium Dichromate, or Na2Pt; you can also use Hydrogen Peroxide BTW? I am currently using 1 drop of Ammonium Dichromate 2% and 8 drops of Ammonium Ferric Oxalate AFO and 8 drops of LiPd solution for a 5x7 print and most targets. I could also increase my exposure time adjusting for maximum white after the first step, instead of limiting the inks at the top end and allow the linearization to increase the density of the mid-tones and shadows in the negative. All of these things will increase the overall density of the negative as you suggest. However, I was under the impression that increasing the contrast of the print through chemical means would emphasize the grain, not decrease it’s overall impression; although working with digital negatives is a different animal. I’ll give it a try and see if these things help.

Of the items you mention it seems the main difference in my methods you suggest in printing is that I need to change is using the rear or top auto sheet feeder which will allow the set platen gap to be used instead of defaulting to Max as when using the front paper feed. Most of the other items you suggest I was already doing. Hope this and a few of the other tweaks will make a difference.

Finally, do you believe switching to the PRO ink set would make any noticeable difference in the quality of my negatives over the P2 Selenium ink set that I’m currently using, which I am getting low on and could easily make the switch to the PRO ink set at this point? Your advice please!

Thanks so much for all of your recommendations!
-Randy

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Hi Randy,

Since I see my name mentioned I guess I’ll jump in. :wink:

First, to clarify a detail about the pin-wheel star-wheel pizza-wheel problem, my article is not recommending the use of the front-feed. In fact I have never advocated using the front-feed for printing negatives (though I did try it long ago). The front-feed tray is extended because that is how the frame that holds the star-wheels (the term Epson uses for them in the Service Manual and Field Repair Guide) is lifted out of the way of the paper path. The swab inserted to engage the switch on the left front side where the panel is removed then tricks the printer into thinking that the front-feed tray is not extended. You do not actually feed from the front. You can use either the sheet feed or the rear manual feed. This is important because the curve of the film as it passes through the head carriage path is what keeps the film flat there.

I’ve never made a custom paper setup for Pictorico so I don’t know if it is beneficial or not. It might be worthwhile to try making a negative using the standard setup (from the custom paper menu) just to see if there is any visible difference. For whatever it may be worth, the thickness of Pictorico Ultra is 0.060" (0.16mm) according to my digital caliper.

Regarding the use of more restrainer, or any restrainer for that matter, I am of the belief based on 3 decades of working with the Pt/Pd process(es) that less is almost always better. When working with film that will be printed directly (not scanned and made into digital negatives) I have always aimed to expose and develop to have enough density and contrast to print with as little restrainer as possible. Sometimes I even achieved that goal and the results were well worth it. In my opinion, the greatest benefit of digital negatives is that we can tailor our negatives to consistently match our process characteristics and therefore remove the need to make those adjustments through chemical means.

I started using the Malde-Ware “ammonium system” a few years ago, mostly in its high RH long-scale variations in order to print some film negatives that were too contrasty for standard DOP Pt/Pd. Some of these negs with density ranges of 2.40 and higher I never thought I’d be able to print at all, but they really sing on the right combination of chemistry and paper with the shadow masking effect of a long-scale print-out process. More recently I’ve been making digital negatives for the same process on a 3880. At first I was using an experimental dye-based inkjet that may be the best digital negative inks I’ve ever used, but unfortunately IJM has shelved it for now. (I hope they will reconsider eventually.) Early this year I switched to the Pro inks which have been working well. I have also recently set up another 3880 with P2-Selenium (long story but has to do with unexpectedly inheriting another 3880 and a lot of ink from a friend moving overseas) and will be hopefully testing that out soon. What sucks for me is that all my working curves were for that experimental dye inkjet and I have run out of my supply. So I am starting again from scratch.

[An exposition on density ranges for different processes and variations therein as well as why it is hard to compare camera negatives to digital negatives might be useful here.]

What this has to do with your problem is that I seriously doubt that it is caused by the inks you are using. When I started with PiezoDN ~5 years ago I had a 1430 with K6-Selenium. After getting up to speed with that I switched to K6-Carbon in the same printer. It worked beautifully so I added a 3880 with P2-Carbon since carbon was (and is) my favorite for ink on paper work, but this configuration produced negatives with visibly gritty highlights much like what you have described. (You may have come across some of our discussions about it going back to 2016.) I was wrongly convinced that the problem was with my printer rather that the inks going through it. After trying all kinds of adjustments to the printer, Walker finally suggested that I try replacing the shades 2 & 3 carbon inks with selenium. This eliminated the grittiness. I had been beating my head on the wall for nothing! Fortunately I had 2 other printer/ink options available this time (1430/Carbon and 3880/dye) so it didn’t affect my ability to make good negatives. I didn’t like the split-tone effect of the mixed carbon/selenium setup for prints on paper and I didn’t have an extra printer to dedicate to a full selenium setup at that time, so I didn’t pursue it further. Now I’m ready to get back to it and compare P2-selenium to Pro for negatives.

I think it would be very useful for us to see some scans and/or Lightbox pics of the results you are getting. The first thing I would want to do is to see if the grittiness is visible in the negatives. If it is then that is where to look for a solution. If it’s not then something in the darkroom side could be to blame. You are already using a small amount of restrainer so I think it is unlikely you need more. If anything it may be too much. In Sullivan and Weese’s original Ziatype book (long out-of-print) they talk about 1 drop of 2% AD to 12 FO and 12 LiPd for a smallish contrast boost. I suggest 1 drop of 1% AD for your 8+8 drop volume. What you should be looking for (in my opinion) is the minimum amount of restrainer necessary to prevent highlight fog and no more. The change in contrast is barely measurable. This could be none in perfect circumstances, or it could be a tiny amount as in my darkroom, or it could be a ridiculously high amount if your workspace has room lights that put out a high enough level of UV to fog your sensitized paper as is the case at the darkroom of a certain well-known supplier of alt-process materials who ought to know better. (A story for another time and place.)

Another useful exercise would be to print a Stouffer 21-step at optimal exposure for your process to see if it shows any sign of grittiness.

All those other restrainers that you mentioned – H2O2, Na2, K chlorate – are used with the standard DOP Pt/Pd process, not with Ziatype or Malde-Ware POP. They may or may not be useful for you, but I’d be reluctant to use more than one at a time.

I hope this little essay help get you on the right track to find a solution to your grain problem. I really didn’t intend for it to be so long.

Keith

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Thanks so much for your input Keith. Your Piezography DN article online and in the book “Digital Negatives with QuadTone RIP (QTR)” stating that the PiezoDN is in a class all to itself was my motivation for giving this system a try.

I know what you mean about pure carbon on paper, best prints I’ve ever made, bar none, and with an inexpensive (at the time) 1400 printer and up to 13" to boot; covers at least 95% or more of my needs. Little did I know what a great printer it was or I would have bought several If I ever suspected that it would be impossible to obtain a new printer currently in production at a reasonable price to work with QTR and piezo type inks, we were really spoiled about 10 years ago or so! Which puts me to where I am today, having to all but mortgage my future, or at least the next several months to purchase this “New” 3880, which as far as I can tell, and up to this point, doesn’t make as fine a print as the little 1400; although it is nice having all of the bells and whistles that the 3880 has. As far as I can tell print head technology hasn’t improved one bit in the past 15 - 20 years, most of the improvements have been in ink technology, primarily color inks, which I have little interest in; with the exception of Cone’s Piezograhpy inks, of course! That’s why I’m so excited about the possibility of Epson’s new ET-8550 EcoTank (6 inks) which Jon teased us with in his last newsletter, although not that cheap, but currently available; sounds like it has a similar print head as the 1400 and it’s other variations; which prints with a 1.4, or is it 1.5 picoliter droplet size, 2880-super resolution.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, back to your recommendations. Concerning the star wheels problem you state above:

“The swab inserted to engage the switch on the left front side where the panel is removed then tricks the printer into thinking that the front-feed tray is not extended. You do not actually feed from the front. You can use either the sheet feed or the rear manual feed. This is important because the curve of the film as it passes through the head carriage path is what keeps the film flat there.”

and Walker stated above:

“You need to make sure that you feed from the top not the front. If you feed from the front you will have max platen gap no matter what.”

So logically my question is: when you modify the 3880 as you propose with the swab to engage the switch, does this allow you to print with a more narrow platen gap even though the front-feed tray is extended, and the star wheels lifted? Or, does having the front-feed tray extended automatically give you the max platen gap as Walker mentions? Seems ideally you could print with the narrow platen gap with the front-feed tray extended and feeding from the rear or top, but that may not be the case, unless, feeding the sheet from the rear and your modifications make that possible. Is that clear as mud, put as simply put as I can make it; perhaps Walker can chime in with his take?

You also state: "At first I was using an experimental dye-based inkjet that may be the best digital negative inks I’ve ever used, but unfortunately IJM has shelved it for now."

and: "What sucks for me is that all my working curves were for that experimental dye inkjet and I have run out of my supply. So I am starting again from scratch."

I do have quite a bit of experience with using dye based inks that I mix myself to print digital negatives and may be able to help you with that, but this probably isn’t the place to discuss; I’ll send you my contact info. thru your website and we can discuss further off the forum

Next, You state above: “After trying all kinds of adjustments to the printer, Walker finally suggested that I try replacing the shades 2 & 3 carbon inks with selenium. This eliminated the grittiness.”

So it sounds like I may be in a good position using the selenium P2 inks in my 3880 as far as getting rid of the gritty highlights. Can you tell me exactly how your are, or were, printing negs using the selenium with shades 2&3 setup, that’s your settings and procedures that you think or feel are important to this end? I’ll be doing some comparisons this afternoon. Your comments will be most appreciated and I look forward to hearing about your experiments comparing the Selenium P2 inks versus the PRO inks for negs in the 3880 in the future; perhaps we can correspond some to that end, let me know if I can be of any assistance!

I will try and post some scans of my prints and negatives, possibly tomorrow, when I have more time, I can scan both since I have a Epson 4990 scanner. I don’t believe the gritty HLs I’ve been getting are due to my darkroom techniques since I was not having this problem using the 1400 and R1800 with dye based inks. Only change in my darkroom procedure was switching from HPR paper to Arches Platine 145g to help cut costs until I get everything all worked out; I also eliminated the use of Tween, as was recommended when using the Arches. I suppose those changes in darkroom technique could possibly affect the grittiness, but I don’t think so. This afternoon I’ll use my tried and true HPR for my comparisons so everything will be equal except for the printer and P2 selenium inks. I’ll also use 1 drop of 1% AD as you recommended. BTW, I have a copy of Sullivan and Weese’s original Ziatype book (long out-of-print), and consider myself fortunate and is a wealth of knowledge, even though it was before the Na2Pt revolution; I also have Dick Arentz book somewhere, if I can find it; probably in one of the boxes I haven’t unpacked yet, that’s another story! And yes, I agree concerning all of your comments concerning restrainers.

Thanks so much for all of your comments and I rather enjoy you taking the time, and space here, long as it may be, to expand on the knowledge base and will hopefully help others in the future. Be looking for my contact info. I’ll be sending you through your website!

Mucho appreciated!

Randy

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Walker,
I just re-read your recommendations and realized I miss-read what you were saying about density of the negative. Instead of using more exposure resulting in a denser negative, I need to minimize my exposure down to the minimum to achieve maximum black, pushing more of the mid-tone inks into the highlights; that make more sense to me than my first misinterpretation of what you were saying about the density of the negative. just noting to clarify for anyone reading this in the future. Well I’ll need to go back and print another limiting target to get my linearization right since I just went in the wrong direction. That’s alright since there’s a couple other tweaks I need to make using Keith’s 3880 modification to eliminate star wheel marks; read how to do here:

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I’m glad Keith gave me props in his 38xx star-wheel article written so many years ago in the beginning of all this PiezoDN business. He was our beta tester. I hope some day I can get you a better dye ink @jkschreiber

best,
-Walker

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Dye based ink may possibly be better for digital negatives but requires you to dedicate your printer to DN’s only, and you give up being able to do pigment based prints; although you may be able to do some proofing with it. Let me know if you need a beta tester for a dye base DN product, I may continue some testing on my own.

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Hi Wrancier, I also, got a almost new 3880 printer from Amazon and am having the same grain issues as you. I’m using the P2 Special Edition inks and have not been able to clear the gain. I did a test print using the 256 step colorport target on HahnPhoRagUltSm paper using the P2-SpecEd-UHD-HahnPhoRag quad. and got a perfect print with no gain. The grain only shows up when making a neg. on pictorico. I wanted to know if you were able to work out the gain issue or ended up changing to the PRO ink set.
Many Thanks
Mitch

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I do have some more info concerning this that I will share and will update this post in hopefully the next day or two, hopefully tonight if all goes well. But the quick answer is yes, with much thanks to Walker and Keith with their insightful post and articles, I’ve been able to solve the grain issue to my satisfaction at this point in time, but only time will tell with more printing and testing using the P2 selenium ink set, but from what I can tell from printing the targets I believe it will be fine for the work I’m doing, and I’m really picky. I do look forward to hearing how Keith’s testing with PRO ink set for DNs on the 3880 goes, but it makes since that the PRO inks would probably be better for UV based processes; I would think that the selenium inks might be better for DNs for conventional gelatin silver printing. So far I’m loving the features on the 3880, and mine was actually new and never used, just wish it had as small a droplet size that they used on some of their consumer models like the 1400 generation; although I believe most of those models were designed for dye based ink and they may have had clogging issues with Epson’s pigment based ink systems. I’ll share my settings and exactly how I’m printing my DNs when I update this post; it’s been an interesting journey to say the least!
Randy

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Looking forward to hearing how you worked out the grain issues. I hope to be printing Negs. soon.
Cheers
Mitch

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I believe what was causing most of my problems with grainy highlights and mid-tones was, as I recall, I was using the front feed without using Keith’s modifications, which according to Walker, sets your platen gap to the max or widest platen gap, even though I had it set to narrow in the custom paper settings. So the first thing I’d recommend would be to follow Keith’s recommended modifications for the 3880. See link above for JKS’s 3880 modifications.

The settings that I am currently using for Custom paper settings:

Paper Type: Photo Paper

Platen Gap: Standard (I’d try Standard setting first, and if that works good, try the Narrow setting and see if you get any head strikes; if you do back it back to Standard and you should be fine)

Thickness Pattern: set to 1 (do the calibration using your media of choice, preferably Pictorico Ultra Premium (PUP) and see what prints best; mine was a setting of 1)

Paper Feed Adjust A&B: both set to 0.00% (I believe these settings are for if you’re having banding issues, which I’m not so I left it alone)

Drying Time: set to 0.0 sec

I did Keith’s 3880 modifications with front feed open and feeding through the Auto Sheet Feeder (AFS). I find that the curvature to the media provided by using the ASF over using the rear feed seems to cause a beneficial curl in the media film as it is printed on and passes through the platen caused by the, ever so slight, downward bow or curl in the (media) film as it is being printed. I was getting some head strikes using the “Narrow” Platen setting so I switched to “Standard” and that seems to have fixed that problem, but I’d recommend using the lowest or most narrow setting your printer will allow without head strikes.

I also wedged a strip of film to act as a guide, 11” in width (wider if you have a longer piece of film) from the right side of the front feed tray. I curled this guide film through the top of the front feed and then below the front roller and taping the front of this “guide film” to the front feed tray; this causes the “guide film” to curve or bow slightly upward, but not so much as to touch the Star-Wheels, which is lifted away from the rollers with JKS’s modification. Play with how far you push this guide film under the front rollers until you get a slight upward bow just right without touching the Star-Wheels, or about half way between the rollers and the Star Wheels. What I’m calling guide film stays in place and guides the media film through the upper part of the front feed tray. The slight upward bow in the guide film seems to further accentuate the beneficial downward curve or very slight downward curl in the (media) film as it is being printed. You may also need to tape a small strip of film of top of the guide film, on the far-right side, to guide the media over the tab on the right side of the front feed tray. Hopefully this will all make sense once you look at the front feed tray, and probably read this paragraph again a time or two; and once you see how the media comes through as it is being printed.

So far I’m getting good results with the setup described above with both Pictorico UP and Fixxons film media; yes I know Pictorico is preferred and better and yada, yada, yada; but I’m getting good results with the Fixxons as well. However, with the Fixxons I do set the Drying time in the Custom Paper settings to 2.0 sec or longer to allow a little more time for the ink to be absorbed by the Fixxons media.

Play around with some of these recommendations and let us know what works best for you!

Hope this helps!

-Randy

13

I am using Keith’s modifications. I’ve tried to set the paper to the settings you are using but the Epson cd that came with my printer is 1.3/US which doesn’t gave me the Remote Panel (I’m using a MAC) I can not make the paper settings on the printer panel itself. I’m afraid to update the Epson Firmware which would gave me the Remote panel. I had been using my 4880 using P2DN and the SpecEdition inks for years with no grain problems. My 4880 is in need of repair so I got the 3880 with the hope of getting the 4880 fixed and used as back up . So here are my ?'s

  1. Can I update my 3880 Firmware without getting locked out for not using Epson inks?
  2. Is it the carbon inks that is causing my grain issues on the 3880?
  3. Would the Pro inks or another ink work better?
    Many Thanks
    Mitch
14

Hey Mitch,
Not sure about the firmware, but I didn’t update mine and looks like my 3880 is probably 10 years old or better out of the box even though it’s was brand new. So I probably wouldn’t risk updating at this point; maybe Walker or Keith will chime in with a better answer. I didn’t use the disk that came with the printer; I downloaded the most current software from Epson’s Support website for downloading software. The settings I’m making are are from the panel on the printer itself. I hit the menu button on the printer and scroll down to Custom Paper settings and then create a profile under Paper No.1 or any of them; you can change the settings there. Make sure the custom Paper setting you are using shows on the panel when it shows that the printer is Ready for printing. See the owners manual if you need specifics.

According to some of Walker’s post in other threads you don’t want to use the carbon inks for DNs, or more specifically the Carbon Shade 2 I believe, because of grittiness or grain issues, specifically with the shade 2 carbon ink. I’m using the Selenium ink set, but it sounds like you could probably just change out the shade 2 and maybe shade 3 with the selenium and be fine from what it sounds like from some of Walker’s and Keith’s post else where; correct me if I’m wrong!

Also, from what I’ve been able to ascertain from some of Walker’s post is that the Pro inks are probably best for DNs, but the selenium inks, at least in shade 2 and maybe 3 are probably not far behind the Pro ink sets. Even though the Pro ink set only has 4 shades in 2 separate sets, one being warm and the other cool, in addition the the HD PK and HD MK, which are common to all of the ink sets. The 2 sets, one being warm and the other cool, even though they are identical in density when printed on paper, block different amounts of UV. i believe the warm set blocks more UV than the cool; so you effectively have a couple more shades in the mix than with the P2 or K7 ink sets for DNs, thus possibly a little smoother transitions between the individual inks, but I can’t imagine it making that much of a difference; although I plan on switching to the PRO inks on my next purchase just so I have that little extra edge.
Hope that helps and possibly Walker or Keith can chime in if they have anything to add or correct where I might have been wrong!
-Randy

15

Hey Randy,
Many thanks for your help. I ordered the Pro Inks to gave that a try.
Cheers,
Mitch

16

Great Mitch,
Keep us posted as to how the PRO ink set works; I’d be interested in hearing how they compare with other ink sets for DNs.
Randy

17

We use pro for our commercial platinum/palladium clients. I formulated it to be the same or better for dig negs than Selenium.

-Walker