Thank you Jon!
OK. I installed the community edition piezography set. For a supported paper, e.g., Type 2, on a 38XX printer, do you have QTR settings that “approximate” the SPED inkset, as a starting point?
Start with 100% Warm in the shadows, go to neutral in mid-tones, and 100% cool in highlights and then dial it all back towards neutral if it gets too wild.
That is they way to start.
best,
Walker
“…go to neutral in mid-tones…” Does that mean 0% in the mid-tones?
By go to Neutral, I mean, use the Neutral curve . . . at 100%.
-Walker
In another thread I asked about updates to split-toning starter recipes (but this is the more relevant thread, which I only discovered after posting). What I said was:
In the Pro inks FAQ on the IJM shop site, you say: “It is the split-toning that makes up the other 999,900 combinations. That is a daunting task and we think the Community is going to be instrumental in sharing these discoveries. Cone Editions Press is going to be sharing split-tone settings on a regular basis.”
I haven’t seen any yet. Perhaps there are some in the Pro Tools forum, but surely CE users could benefit from such recipes as well? Any users care to share recipes? I know that you can’t replicate SpecEd exactly using Pro inks, but surely you must be able to get into the ballpark / cricket ground?
Is there really nothing more that could be shared, either by IJM or other users?
Papers vary in their response to color, requiring a different mixture to get a similar result. This is wonderful actually: millions of options multiplied by many papers = even more options.
To save time and resources, for my own reference I have created a binder filled with a sample image printed on different papers with different settings.
In practice I have settled on only a few combinations, but can easily refer to a previous experiment to see how an image might look if rendered otherwise.
I responded to this via my email client, but for whatever reason it appears it has never showed up here on the forum. So here is what I previously sent earlier today:
Hi Brian,
There have been a few discussions on the Piezo Pro Private discussion forum (for users who have purchased the Piezography Professional Edition software) regarding blending/split recipes, but I’m not sure if you have access to that forum currently. There really isn’t that much there on this topic…seems like everyone is just experimenting without much commenting.
I can share a couple of things on this topic:
What I’m using
I print Piezo Pro inks on a 7900 which has a bad GREEN channel, so I cannot do the full Cool-K5 / Warm-K5 setup for the Pro inks which would require all channels fully functioning. Instead I am running a Cool-K5 / Warm-K4 combination of inks (which requires remapping the cool curves and then using the PPE “Blender Tool” to make my own custom Neutral curve from the linearized Cool-K5 and Warm-K4 curves).
In general, you will find that each paper will require some experimenting to find your desired blend/splits. I was initially surprised to find that there can be a huge difference between matte and photo surface papers regarding the tones produced by a given blend/split. So for me, each preset is unique to a specific paper . In general, photo surface papers will print much warmer than matte papers with the same blend/split.
For Canson Rag Photographique (my most used paper at present), I have two QTRGui presets as follows:
7900-CRP-H100C_M50C50N_S100W – This is my naming convention for the following split tone blending:
Highlights = 100% Cool
Midtones = 50% Cool and 50% Neutral
Shadows = 100% Warm
7900-CRP-H100C_M65C35W_S100W – This preset doesn’t use the Neutral curve at all
Highlights = 100% Cool
Midtones = 65% Cool and 35% Warm
Shadows = 100% Warm
I seem to go back and forth between these two on the CRP paper and haven’t really settled on one or the other yet. As you can see, I like cool highlights and warmer shadows. I really like how this tends to open up the shadows for my landscape images.
Other resources
Check out this discussion:
On the Cone Editions website, here’s some useful blend/split examples:
And finally, here’s a comment from Walker regarding the suggested methodology for coming up with blends/splits (from the private forum…hope Walker won’t mind me cross-posting this here):
“Ok. So there will always be differing opinions about how/when to tone but the manual holds true here. Always start at neutral and then only use a combo of Neutral/Warm or Neutral/Cool to get to your color. Cool/Warm ink are NOT equal in hue strength so it gets too complicated to predict the color if you aren’t using Neutral curve as your hinge-point.
The neutral is 80%cool and 20%warm (warm is a much stronger color than neutral).”
I hope this is helpful.
Dave
Thanks. All comments are helpful.
First, an explanation. I don’t have the Pro tools (yet). Why not? Well I have three printers that I could use the Pro inks in, two of which have been funkee, in that some channels can misbehave, and one that is as yet unused, and I hope will awake from hibernation in flush with all channels firing. I need a printer with all working channels for Pro, whereas I could get away with less for K6/K7/Pro. Buying the Pro inks was a bit of a gamble on my printers, and I don’t intend to commit more money until I know that I have a stable printing environment.
Second, yes, I understand that paper choice is important. That’s been my precise problem with the Special Edition inkset. It’s glorious on MK papers but far too warm on PK papers, and even on MK papers there’s a reasonable amount of variation. That was part of the attraction of Pro, it promises the potential of a more subtle split-toning effect on PK papers that more closely resembles the effect on MK papers.
But despite the effect of paper selection, I thought that someone may have attempted to find a combination that comes closest to mimicking SpecEd on a range of paper types, as a starting point for working with just the Community Edition. It seems not.
Thanks for the recipes so far and the Cone Editions link. I had seen that Agfa thread before, but I’d forgotten about it. I think there’s enough in that to at least get me started.
Actually, I have one more question. Has anyone tried to create a pair of recipes that give a similar toning effect on an MK paper and a PK paper, e.g. CRP and Platine. If so, how different were the recipes?
Pro ink wil not reproduce spec-ed because the cool-side ink is not magenta like Selenium (highlights of SpecEd) and the warm-side is also not quite as rosy as the carbon K7 ink because its a totally different carbon that we make Pro out of.
The decisions around Pro were as follows:
- Warm = 100% Palladium in Oxalate developer.
- Combo of Warm and Cool makes a VERY good neutral.
- Minimum acceptable amount of colorants in the cool ink (aka it’s a cool neutral ink in reality).
- Singles pass gloss, etc, etc.
best,
Walker
I understand that. It’s been discussed before. I bought Pro knowing all or most that. Hence why I said “comes closest to mimicking SpecEd” rather than “replicating SpecEd”. I was not expecting an exact match, rather wondering how close or far you can come. Perhaps less close that I thought.
Since there doesn’t seem to be an answer to that question, how about my last question - about matching the toning effect on MK and PK papers? No-one tried it?
It’s possible that I’ve seen that Cone Editions press page before and forgotten. It contains some of the information I was seeking. Except that …
@IJM_TechSupport and @IJM_TechSupport : What’s the best way to provide feedback on that page? In the second row of thumbnails for the toning recipes, Warm, Semi-Warm and Warm-Neutral all say " Hue Blend: 20% Neutral & 80% Warm" and that has to be a typo. If you mouse over the thumbs Semi-Warm says “40% Cool 60% Warm” (which might also be a typo - should that be 40% Neutral?) and Warm-Neutral says “80% Neutral 20% Warm”.
It would also be useful to know whether the thumbs are for matte or glossy, although that’s less critical, as you can work that out for yourself. Using the two Warm-Neutral ICCs to soft-proof suggests that they’re for matte.
Thumbs are for matte paper. It’s a typo. -fixed
-W
Except that if you mouse over the thumbs for Semi-Warm and Warm-Neutral you still get different blends to the text under the thumbs.
(Using the revised text rather than the mouse-over, after playing with the ICCs I’m surprised that a 10% shift in the blend from Warm to Neutral produces such a noticeable shift in tone from the Warm Blend to the Semi-Warm. None of this matters to CEP customers so long as the ICCs match the thumbs, but to the extent that this is supposed to provide guidance to new Pro users, as the Pro FAQ foreshadowed, all these discrepancies are confusing.)
I was going off an old toning reference doc from CEP. I have updated the website text to reflect the mouse-over REL text for the images + ICC names.
best,
Walker
Thanks, that’s helpful. I’m still a bit surprised by Semi-Warm having so much warm. From blending the Warm and Neutral ICCs in a layered TIFF, I’d have expected a 50-50 blend, but there are limitations to such a simulation technique.
The warm color is quite a bit stronger than either neutral or cool so a 20% shift up in warm is a lot.
best,
Walker
I understand that. That’s my point exactly. Going the other way, I thought you’d have to pull out more warm from Warm in order to get down to the look in Semi-Warm, and that’s what my simulations suggest. I think Semi-Warm is likely to be 50-50.
Well. We printed these targets, measured them, and converted those test images to them and those where the actual toning counts that created the LAB data that you see on those images so it’s what it is.
best,
Walker
I see the problem. The text under the Semi-Warm thumb is still not right. It says “40% Neutral & 60% Warm” whereas the mouseover says “40% Cool 60% Warm”, which I assume is correct, as the file name is PiezoPro_Matte_C40-W60.jpg. That works in my simulation as well. Phew!
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