Re: Quadtone Inks & Digital Negatives

Joe,

I agree with everything you have said.

I also think there are better ways to control ink density with quadtones than
ICC profiles.  Cone had a great idea and was a pioneer.  They ran
into some problems with faulty inks for a while, but to their credit, worked
that out.

The original Piezography system had some advantages, since it actually was a
printer driver that was designed for quad inks.  It gave an apparent
higher resolution.  However, imagine the difficulty of rewriting that
driver for every new printer that Epson or other companies come out with....it was
not long before they were overwhelmed by this.

Thus they went the route of the ICC profiles in sort of a cookie cutter
fashion.  Generic profiles may be better than no profile when printing
POSITIVE inkjet prints.  However, not every Epson 2200 prints the same—print
heads are manufactured within tolerance ranges that determine whether or not
they pass and are used.  I have heard that they use these tolerance tests
to determine which printer model they put the printhead on—but this may be
rumor.

A great idea, but one that did not seem to have a long term solution given
the specificity of how printer drivers are modified for new printers.

Mark Nelson

In a message dated 2/6/04 10:50:58 AM, dalaibobra@houston.rr.com writes:

>
> Personally, I think that Piezography is totally overrated. Their
> longevity claims are dubious on the inks (I trust Paul Roark on this one).
>
> To me, MIS is of equal quality; much cheaper, offer more choice, and
> have better service (although practially all companies fall short in
> this area oftentimes). It's kind of a no brainer for me.
>
> -Joe
>
Received on Fri Feb 6 12:24:48 2004