Dear PiezoDN and Piezography Pro (ink) customers. Here is a pre-release “gold master” PiezoDN curve for the Pro inkset for all 8 channel x8xx (K3, K3v) printers.
Note, this master curve is for UV process currently. Mileage may vary for silver, but test it anyway.
I’m really happy with this curve and it’s proving to be equal and almost better than the K7 selenium PiezoDN base curves. What is unique about this curve structure is that it utilizes the higher UV blocking of the warm inks (M, LM, Y channels) vs the less UV block of the cool inks (C, LC, LK). Pro inks (which have nearly equal paper Luminance values in Dark, Medium, and Light) actually function much more like K7 inks in the UV-process world allowing for a more even spread and less noise.
Over the coming weeks I will update the full curve roster for Pro. If anyone has a pro set and wants to send me printed targets (exact size as the target uploaded) for their various printing processes, I would be more than happy to take them. I do not have the time to bust out every process under the sun myself but if you send me a target I’ll make a custom calibration and also publish that for all PiezoDN customers.
1.3mL of 50Pd-50Pt Malde-Ware printout ammonium process solution.
.16mL of Tween/Glycerin combo (this helps with noise, I highly recommend it for all platinum/palladium printing)
175 Units (about 3412 on the PPM2 sensor machines) of UV light
RH of 46% at all times during coat and dry of paper.
I understand that many (if not most) PiezoDN customers will be doing the develop out method. In my experimentation, building master negs with our print-out method here is actually closer to other people’s develop out method because our exposure unit is weird and causes very dense negatives for develop out but “standard” negatives for the print-out. That being said, as all darkrooms are different, you will most likely need to calibrate.
Small formats like these put out slightly less ink than the larger formats. So these two curves have been modified slightly from the original master to put out a bit more density throughout the tonal range. This ideally gets the first target you print closer to linear for whatever UV process you are calibrating.
For clarity on my part, you would like the physical print made in my process with the gold master .quad with Pro inks on (in my case) a 7880? This would use the beta 0.38-5.3.0 release.
Please print with QuadtoneRIP on this one and evaluate. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
Yep. Print what I uploaded above, exact size of the target (do not print the target less than 100% or more than 100% scale in Print Tool). It’s fine to leave extra white space on the printed paper though.
Walker,
I’m printing with the Malde/Ware system, pretty much identically to your technical details as listed in the second entry above. I’d be happy to print the target with a negative out of my 3880: Pro Inks: Pictorico film - if that would be helpful. It sounds like you have that covered, but let me know.
Hello Walker, I’ve used Tween reasonably often for developing out palladium depending on the paper but am interested in your use of a Tween/glycerin combo. Can you provide some more details (how much Tween and what strength, and how much glycerin). Is standard supermarket glycerin good to use? Thank you! Julian
The process has been verified over the years. Exposure does not exceed 5-7 minutes in oem ink.
With these quads, even with an extreme exposure of 20 minutes, I cannot rise above 170.
Does such an extremely low density affect the quality of the negative?
The difference that you are finding in how this Master curve is behaving for you compared to how it works for Walker is entirely due to the differences in darkroom side of the printing process. Walker produced this curve using a very long-scale flavor of the Malde-Ware print-out Pt/Pd method, while you are using develop-out Pd with a fairly short scale due to the high amount of Na2 you are using as a restrainer.
With digital negatives, where we have absolute control over maximum density and exposure scale of the negative, there should be no reason to use more than the bare minimum amount of restrainer (be it Na2 or anything else) to avoid fog that may be caused by ferric oxalate that may be less than optimal — that is, has too much ferrous oxalate in it making it prone to chemical fog. If you really need 3 drops of 5% Na2 added to 2 ml of FO+Pd to prevent fog, then it is likely that your room lights are producing a problematic level of UV light. One drop of Na2 diluted to 1.25% should be sufficient.
I suggest reducing your Na2 to 1 drop of 1.25% (or certainly no more than 1 drop of 2.5%) to see a significant increase in visible highlight steps on the target print. Even with a bare minimum of restrainer (or even none at all if your conditions allow), the develop-out method has a shorter scale than most variations of the Malde-Ware print-out method, so you will still need to limit the Master curve a bit before you will be able to linearize.
Thanks Keith! I did a print with 1 drop of "Na2. “5%”, I managed to rise to 120. I am sure that I can reduce the percentage of Na2 to a minimum and rise to 130-150.
And yet, I would like to ask Walker to make the master curve less dense for the traditional process.
I suspect (if this is not so, reassure me) that the big restrictions affect the contrast.
