Newbie needs help

[jschryver]

Hey Boys, Hey Girls, Here We Go!

Newbie to Piezography. Just wasted enough Rag and Carbon to sing the Carbon Rag. After getting the system dialed in, Epson SHP-9000, PiezoProV2, PS2021, Leica M10_Monochrome, QuadTone, Print_Tool. My primary image and test targets were always dark. PS taking in DNG and outputting TIFF flattened with a grey2.2gamma profile.
Doing test prints on Canson Etching. the blacks were furious. Nothing could stop it. My monitor is BEMQ321-c and was hardware calibrated within 0.5E across the board. The monitor looked great, the print was way dark.
Finally I printed a 51 step on Quadtone and then a second at -15 gamma. It looked like 50L was being mapped from 28L. I applied a single curve adjustment mapping 50L back to 28L and although the screen print was very light, the print, now quad tone at 8/16 auto bits from a flat TIFF and no gamma correction produced a reasonably fine final print.
Can anyone tell me why it took so much tequila together here and why is my print so dark using "recommended"workflow.

Cheers, Jeffrey

[jschryver]

Those numbers may have been reversed, 50 was printing as 28, my adjustment curve mapped 28 back to 50.

[walkerblackwell]

Ok, so Canson rag (photographique platine?) carbon inkset. Carbon K6/P2 or K7?

You should be using curves from one of those folders. Please let me know the curve, please show me photos of print-out, curve selection, etc.

best,
Walker

[jschryver]

Photoshop custom proof Piezography matte selenium soft proof.icc from the Piezopro 9000 p2 set, quad tone P2-SEL-UHD-HahnProtoRag308, single curve, mode Quadtone RIP 8-bit, Epson set on PhotoMK but complains if I set it to matte, qudtone black ink set as installed, . Original file DNG and imported through PS raw without modifications. Tried saving the TIFF without Gamma2.2 embedded but no effect.

[jschryver]

same target printed with QTR gamma at 0 and below printed with gamma -15. Cut out swatches at L50 and L74 placed on the print set at gamma 0. Showa approx 28l differential.

[walkerblackwell]

please upload the measurements if you have them. I’d like to graph against linear.

Also, always print 16bit.

best,
Walker

[jschryver]

Will do, or try, operating on an Apple silicon M1 so there are some problems measuring with data color Spyder but a few beers will probably solve that.

Was printing on 16 bits when the problem surfaced, switched to Auto but no joy.

[walkerblackwell]

also you are using the SEL curve but have carbon ink set. Use the CAR curve.

best,
Walker

[jschryver]

ill run it again with CAR, may be confused , thought P2 PRO would allow selenium. Problem surfaced while using CAR, but any experiment that is not repeatable is indistinguasable from religion.

[walkerblackwell]

@jschryver

P2 PRO would allow selenium

P2 is not PRO.

What ink set do you actually have in your printer?

-Walker

[jschryver]

Its looking great now, I have PRO ink on a P9000. My error was the printer was set on Photo black and I was running the Matte curves with QTR set up to accept installed ink. I didn’t realize the printer had to be manually switched rather than the driver QTR selecting the K. Now a 100 step grid has differentiation on each step. Yea! my curves may still not be the right ones - They are from P7000-9000-Pro-K5.

[jschryver]

OK, now I found them, the HD set p9000, k7-CAR-UHD-CanEdEtch. What a Bozo I Yam!
\Thanks for the patience Walker, you are the El Duderino.

[jschryver]

Stil a Bozo, the printer driver shows a QTR error, wrong number of inks =9 in profile. slap my mamma. Ill just sit tight until the rescue crew arrives.

[walkerblackwell]

I went ahead and looked up our delivery history to you. You have Piezography PRO ink set.

So on the Mac you need to install from this folder:

Do not use a K7 curves! You don’t have a K7 inkset.

The PRO curves (however) all use “HD” inks, but the Curves-HD folder was created after the Pro inks were launched as we updated all our legacy inks with HD and published those curves recently.

best,
Walker

[jschryver]

Piezography is my Savior’s trumpet, and Walker is his Conductor.