>So I can't help but wonder if anyone has tried printing image files onto
>transparencies and using these as negatives for alt processes? I suspect
>that they might work fine for images in which fine detail is not important,
>but I don't have one of these printers (I use a laser), so I really can't
>be sure.
>
>Has anyone tried using inkjet transparencies as negatives? I'd appreciate
>any comments or suggestions.
At the 1997 Alternative Photography International Symposium, I gave a
presentation on this subject, showing that with Photographic Quality
printers (not Photo-Realistic, which is a step below) excellent negatives
were possible. Richard Sullivan made some Zeotype prints from one of the
negs I furnished, and the quality was on a par with any made with silver
negatives.
Though the quality is achievable with any high quality photographic
printer, I have found the best results are obtainable by using the ALPS
Masterpiece (MD2300) printer, which uses pigments rather than dyes. By
using what they call "double black" the highlight areas are opaque where
required. ("Double black" means a black made by depositing all four colors
to make the black - black alone does not have the covering power, which is
the problem with laser printers.)
In another post, someone mentioned why not just produce the final print by
computer printer. I am presently doing a study of permanence, but so far
have found that no dye images (chemically or computer printer produced) can
be considered archival. One of the main advantages of most alternative
processes (especially the ones using metals, like platinum) is the
longevity of the image when produced on archival paper (another factor in
my study). Next are prints made with pigments, but even many of them are
mordanted dyes. How long a time is "archival"? A lifetime? Forever? I have
considered 100 years as an achievable time, but if one pays a large sum of
money for a print, a degrading of that work represents considerable loss.
This is a big subject, and I will be discussing this further, hopefully at
APIS 1998, if my results are ready.
Sil Horwitz, FPSA
Technical Editor, PSA Journal
silh@iag.net
Visit http://www.psa-photo.org/