Hello,
I’ve been printing with Pro for a couple of weeks now (Epson 3880), after switching from Neutral K7 for a year or so. I print on glossy (JC5, Can Platine, HAN FineArtBaryta, Epson EFP), ) and I switched to PiezoPro because I was never fond of a second printing of GO, and I was not entirely happy with the ‘neutral’ image color. Other than changing papers it was not possible to alter the K7 Nu image color. I am struggling getting the image color I want with Pro inks. I came from a darkroom background and I’m trying to get tones close to Zone VI Brilliant Bromide and VC papers. I don’t much care for brownish images or purplish images. I’m talking about very subtle variations in prints. I can elaborate and show my measured ranges of ab values possible for the Warm and Cool Pro inks, and the range of possibilities for various combinations. Here is my main question: Is it possible to replace the 4 Warm Pro inks with 4 of the Neutral K7 inks? If not, what are the issues with mixing across K7 and Pro inks? Are there other IJM inks that could replace the 4 Warms?
I’d also be interested in hearing from others regarding their experiences of subtle image ‘color’ from combining these Cool-Warm inks, both positive and negative. I wonder whether IJM might consider a different Warm set in the future with different spectral reflectances, perhaps a set less saturated.
In short, I hear you 100%. I can only say I’m working on it and to do it right requires an actual dedicated driver for Piezography (something more advanced than QuadtoneRIP). I can’t say anything more at the moment, but there are some very exiting things coming.
Just a quick background on the R&D of this ink, the fundamental paradigm shift is the glossiness of the carbon. Because all (gloss) carbon is quite warm, the color strength of the warm ink on gloss paper is not something we can control directly in the ink, but we were able to build a neutralizing (cool) ink so it’s able to be done mathematically.
Controlling the green/magenta axis is the key which Pro does not have. Because the old K7 neutral ink (it is a greenish European neutral) is a different carbon (less glossy and a different shape) it’s not compatible with mixing into the Pro inks.
If a dedicated driver means something outside of QTR and Print-Tool, I would welcome a print driver or app that supports print nesting, adding crop marks and easily setting custom paper sizes. On the color printing side of our studio we use Mirage RIP which has these features and more.
I suppose StudioPrint has those layout features already but it’s PC only, and wouldn’t work with the Piezography Pro toolset for linearizing curves, blending tools, etc. I used Studioprint in 2005-2007 before K7 came out, running a dual quad 7600 with selenium on one side and warm neutral on the other. It has its own linearization routine back then.
The driver would be just that (a driver) not a layout program. It would allow full bleed printing and 2880x2880 dpi for the large formats and 5760x2880 dpi for the small formats and full color managed pipeline (print from any layout app).
Building a nest/tile/crop-mark layout app is a whole other ball-game. We wan’t to work on the fundamentals first.
SWIFT code in OS X is not making building a layout app much easier though. Just we are a small team that is trying to make the next QTR because that is no longer updated…