Digital BW, The Print

Martin Wesley
http://www.borderless-photos.de/guests.html



----- Original Message -----
From: "antonisphoto" <antonisphoto@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 27, 2002 4:39 PM
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: Sundance Inks, R9 and other issues


> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Martin Wesley"
> <mwesley250@e...> wrote:
>
> > What R9 or Conetech could do would be to offer profiles within their
plug-in
> > to give a better match with other Piezo compatible ink sets on some of
the
> > more popular papers. I would think this would be fairly straight forward
and
> > could become a selling point for the company that wanted to pursue it.
>
> Martin,
>
> profiling papers for a given inkset is one thing but profiling inksets is
another. I
> know we have all switched from old piezoBW inks to PiezoTones using the
> same profiles, but I suspect that we aren't getting all we can get from
the new
> inkset.  To do that is more work than just a profile. You have to address
how a
> new ink technology reacts with the papers.

Antonis,

I do agree with you but if someone is armed with the expertise, good
spectrophotometers and high end profiling software, as I would expect
Sundance and ConeTech to be, then it should be doable. Looking at results of
the MIS-FS, MIS-FSN, PiezoTone and Piezo with the same driver and paper, the
differences seem pretty small. It is down to that last couple of percent of
extracting the most from the materials. Perhaps this is not complex but
simply time consuming and not profitable.
>
> Also, we still don't have a true hex-capable software. It's only quad at
the
> driver level. And, while we are dreaming, we also don't have anything that
> accepts a CMYK file and keeps it that way - or, dare I say it, a 6 channel
file,
> that  would give the user exact control over the inks - imagine that!!.
For now,
> we have to feed a grayscale or, at best an RGB. The final separation is
locked
> in those black boxes "for our benefit".

Well you know my dream is a 6 or 7 channel driver with an ink set containing
a black, 2 or 3 shades of gray and three separate small gamut toner grays,
one each for C, M and Y. This would be coupled with an easy to use interface
that would allow you to pick your paper and overall hue, and also allow you
to custom tweak the hue separately in the highlights, midtones and shadows.

I don't think this is impossible from a technical standpoint but I could be
wrong. More likely it is not economically feasible. There just aren't enough
of us doing this to offset the development costs.
>
> Ah, the ink-soaked days of the Iris!....

Missed that myself. Too rich for my pocket book but I remember lusting after
some Nash Editions prints from my negs.
> >
> > In any case I think the preferred business model from an end user point
of
> > view is a separation of the ink makers and the software vendors.
>
> ...and the paper makers. Part of what has held  development back is this
> bundling notion that the software is good only for the inks and papers
that a
> given vendor sells. Epson, of course, being the prime example.

You are right and once again I think it is the economics of the situation
driving things. While we beat up on the printer manufacturers for gouging us
on the consumables, the reality is that if they didn't do that to some
extent the printers would cost much more than they do. It is a case of where
they are deciding to take their profit.

Last I heard the profit target on the printers was -1% to +2% or essentially
break even. Standard manufacturing rules of thumb suggest you want something
like a 20% return on your investment. So they are making their profit on the
ink and paper. For those of us who are willing to use the less expensive
aftermarket inks this is a good deal. The papers are still a mystery in
their cost. Logically inkjet paper of even the highest quality should cost
less than silver fiber paper which is much more difficult to manufacture and
uses more expensive materials. Perhaps it is still an issue of volume.

Bottom line though it is not just the inks, or the printer, or the paper, or
the driver or the paper coating. It is a complex blend of all of them. I
think things are getting much better, at least in terms of the number of
options available to us and their quality, but I think we will be muddling
along here for awhile longer before we hit the kind of steady state we are
used to in silver printing. It would be nice to think that the 2200 will
solve all our woes but I will be very pleasantly surprised if that turns out
to be the case.

Martin