QuadToneRip 16bit on Windows?

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I’m getting started with QuadToneRIP and Piezography (for prints and digital negatives). I’m currently reading through all the documentation available for both QuadToneTip and Piezography, but I’m getting hung up on this segment in the QTR documentation.

“The .tiff format is very flexible and images stored in this format can have a
wide range of characteristics. Recent versions of QuadToneRIP have
removed many of the constraints on the image characteristics, but it must
be either a grayscale or RGB image. If the image is RGB, QuadToneRIP will
convert it to grayscale. If the image is 16 bit, it will be converted to 8 bit.
Alpha channels in the image will be ignored and layers are permitted. The
image can be in compressed (LZW only) or uncompressed format. Note that
any conversions are only applied to the image data actually processed by
QuadToneRIP. The original file is not changed.”

The Piezography documentation calls out using 16bit files. From what I can tell the OSX version of the tool has the option to select between 8bit and 16bit. Is 8bit an inherent limitation on Windows? The documentation is old, is this even still accurate? I have access to a Mac, should I be transferring my files to the mac prior to printing to access 16 bit in QTR? I like technically high quality pints, how much does 8bit vs 16bit matter?

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Welcome to Piezography!

16-bit matters during imaging and especially during hard editing. Piezography will print with tens of thousands of gray levels regardless if the image file is in 8bit or 16bit. Piezography will not improve on heavy handed 8-bit imaging. Actually, it will call attention to it because the system prints with more resolution than the standard EPSON driver.

Attached is a guide that will help you gain a better understanding of the OS X version in the case that your method of calibration is better served on Print Tool rather than the purely linear response of QTR Windows. I think that the two methods of printing (Linear or Contrast Matching with an ICC) with OS X Piezography are the biggest gain. However, you can tweak the curves for windows using PPETv2. If you need help or a tutorial about that let me know.

Piezography Image Preparation for Piezography Users-small.zip (572.3 KB)

Jon Cone