Matte ink on Gloss paper

InkjetMall Customer Support Piezography Inks & Printing
1

I’ve just purchased my first set of inks (special edition, matte only)…To date i am quite pleased with the results!..OK so enough of that! :slight_smile:
I’ve dedicated a 3880 that has a problem with the PK channel, forcing me to purchase Matte ink only.
For fun, I’ve downloaded the new glossy curves to try the matte ink on gloss paper ( Canson photographique) . I am finding out a few things;

  1. It does not look bad at all…ink does not bleed
  2. The prints come out quite darker than expected so i will need to readjust my processing
  3. I will also have to deal with the Bronzing, and since i do not have a slot available for Cone’s GO… i will need to try something else.

Does anyone have suggestions on a good commercially available spray( other than Hahnemuhle) ?

Would love to hear about other experiences with matte on gloss paper!

Looking forward to the chatter

Pete

2

Hahnemuhle archival spray works great for this.

The curves should not print super dark. We will be publishing new curves shortly. Here is a set of new P2 curves. These will be coming in the upcoming Piezography release. They are built for PK in the Yellow channel. They use 6 shades instead of 7. This will allow you to do shades 2,3,4,5,6 in the normal positions and then put PhotoK in Yellow and MatteK in the LLK channel and then over-gloss manually.

http://piezography.com/3800-3880-P2.zip

Best,
Walker

3

Your printer is an ideal candidate for what is known as P2, in which you effectively run K6 rather than K7, leaving out shade 7. This allows you to put glossy shade 1 in the Yellow slot, and the P2 curves for glossy papers were designed for this configuration. My experience is that you don’t loose much by leaving out shade 7 - I’ve never managed to spot the difference - and you gain a lot in flexibility.

What would be ideal would be a universal shade 1 that you could use on both gloss and matte. The risk of using MK on gloss is that it may rub off, and the risk of using PK on matte is that you lose dmax. There was a universal shade 1 a few years back, not designed that way but it was discovered to work that way, but in the way of things, it was reformulated and lost that property. There is a whiz-bang new black ink coming out that may reinstitute this capability. Walker will clarify this no doubt.

In a 3880, GO would normally go in the LLK position. I think you have the space for it. Yes, glossy & baryta papers have a higher dmax than matte and hence a different look. What look do you want?

p.s. I see that Walker has also suggested P2, although I wonder it he actually meant to put MK in the K channel as per usual and GO in the LLK channel.

4

Great! thanks for the P2 curvers Walker…I in fact purchased K7 because these curves where the ones available in QTR.
I will look at P2 on the next go around.
Thanks for your comments Brian, and yes i agree that a universal black would be nice…i suspect that this new ink could compromise some dmax… Your right the LLK slot is free ( i didn’t know better so i filled it with the piezoflush that was sent as part of the matte kit) i guess that the p2 curves will trigger the LLK channel so that GO can be applied.
Pierre

5

The new PK will not be universal. The original “universal” PK actually lacked signifcant gloss and dMax in Photo Black mode and was not entirely full-strength in Matte Black mode (it was the minimum of both worlds). I used it as one of the first customers of CCPro ink back in the day when managing UVM’s digital lab. It was a great teaching ink (we put it in a 4880 and ran it for Matte and Gloss printing) but I don’t think it was up to snuff for production printing.

Our new PK HD gets down to L* values of 2.4-6.5 (depending on the gloss paper, and possibly lower) for Epson drivers and L* values of 1.62-6.3 (depending on gloss paper) with upcoming Piezography Pro inks. However, it will not perform like Matte K ink on Matte papers. This is due to carbon particle sizes and surface areas. It is not physically possible to make a universal black ink that has all four properties: good black in gloss, good gloss on gloss, good black in matte, and archival. This is why all leading OEMs continue to make MK/PKs.

best,
Walker

6

vis a vis curves available in QTR, the next release should have all the curves taken out of the basic installation for QTR and we will provide a continually updated (and DEBUGGED) curve archive from piezography.com

best,
Walker

7

I’m not sure which UB you’re referring to, but for the record (since it’s no longer relevant), the universal ink I was referring to was something sold as Warm Neutral Opaque Photo Black Shade 1, and if it was good enough for Tyler Boley, then it was good enough for me. It even gets a mention on page 5 of the new Piezography Manual. It was Tyler who discovered last year that after a reformulation it had lost its universal nature. You can’t fight progress it seems. Clearly my recollection about how you described the new forthcoming black ink was faulty.

8

WN1 has certainly gone through some iterations but it was never built to work well with Matte paper and the result of a few batches working was a happy accident.

Piezography WN Opaque Black Shade 1 was originally built for transparency printing and it will most likely be dedicated solely to that roll in the future as we progress towards making significantly glossier and reflectively darker PK with Piezography Pro inks. WN1 is the most opaque K ink I’ve ever used for transparencies gaining a 2.9 to 3.2 optical density level when under-printed properly with shade 2. When printed with MPS curves on paper, it actually needs to print very very little. Shade 2 prints much more. The two interact in a very specific way to enable a dried MPS print to be over-glossed and then achieve a very dark dMax on even rough pearl-surface semi-gloss rag papers. After realizing that this ink could work as a dedicated Piezography photo black it has been improved to increase glossiness while maintaining its film opaque qualities. This mostly was the reason for its apparent decline in its off-prescription use.

regards,
Walker

9

Good education here guys
thanks!
p