Welcome to Piezography Pro
Piezography Pro inks introduced in 2017 designed for 9 and 11 ink position printers makes the highest-quality fine-art monochrome prints in the world. With the industry’s best dMax, highest resolving fidelity, visually balanced toning options, and most uniform gloss, Piezography Pro has it all.
Piezography Pro’s new pigment and curve shaping technology, enable one million toning variations and industry-leading dMax on more than 30 different fine-art papers out of the box.
Gloss “chroma” optimizer is printed at the same time as the ink. Piezography Pro gloss far surpasses the newest Epson SureColor and Canon Pro printer systems even with printers a decade old.
At our research and proving grounds, Cone Editions Press, we’ve experimented with black ink from all over the world. Piezography Pro is the darkest dMax (blackness of black) we’ve ever measured in-lab.
The Piezography Pro ink system comes with a set of tools and documentation for calibrating and tuning your workflow to enable consistency and tonal fidelity unparralled by any other system.
ARTIST-MADE
Piezography Pro is made at Vermont PhotoInkjet in Vermont: an artist-led, innovative, inkjet technology company with deep roots in the formation of fine-art inkjet as we know it today.
LONG TERM SUPPORT (LTS)
For labs, it’s important that the ink stay consistent from batch to batch. With updated in-house quality-control systems and software, Piezography Pro meets that need head-on.
NEW DOCUMENTATION
Pro comes with The Piezography Manual Deluxe Edition covering everything from advanced K7/K6 & Pro curve modifications, linearization, studio maintenance, and more.
CONTINUAL UPGRADES
As new printers and papers and spectrophotometers come out over the coming decade, Piezography Pro curves and tools will change to meet the requirements!
BLENDING
Piezography Pro utilizes two inksets: warm and cool. These finely balanced ink hues make neutral when combined together at certain percentages enabling very creative control of the warm, neutral, and cool axis. Up to one million unique toning combinations can be achieved all from a single printer.
Neutral
Warm
Cool-Neutral
Neutral Shadows, Warm Highlights
Warm Neutral
Warm-Neutral Shadows, Cool-Neutral Highlights
Want to stay informed?
GLOSS OPTIMIZED
Piezography Pro has a newly invented micro co-polymer Gloss “chroma” Optimizer that surounds each carbon/pigment particle in the ink and is also extended within a final “clear” ink channel. Piezography Pro encapsulates the entire gloss print under a protective layer from edge to edge all at the same time as the inking: no need to do a second print pass with the optimizer.
We printed a portrait on one of the hardest gloss papers to print correctly: Harman Gloss FB Neutral. We printed with a brand-new Epson SureColor P800 (above on the left) with Epson UltrachromeHD inks installed. Then we did a print on a much older Stylus Pro 3880 with our new Piezography Pro inks installed (above on the right). The visual results speak for themselves.
Not only is there no gloss differential between the white of the paper and the inked image, there is 90% less visual bronzing than Epson’s most recent inkset. Because the white of the OBA paper is also encapsulated by gloss optimizer, it no longer fluoresces and its color remains uniform under all different light sources.
SUPER DARK DMAX* (Blackness of Black)
When dMax is measured, it is generally communicated in terms of “Density”. When measuring matte blacks this is fairly straightforward. On Hahnemule Photo Rag paper, the new Piezography Pro Ultra HD matte black ink produces a density of 1.84 which is significantly darker than the Epson 9900 matte black (1.65) or the latest Epson P-800 matte black (1.75). Ultra HD is the darkest matte black ink on Earth!
When measuring photo blacks, density values are (often) arbitrarily calculated from the more scientifically standard “Luminance” values given by all of the various machines that measure reflected light. Luminance is the percentage of light reflected from a print. The conversion from Luminance to Density when it nears 3.0 is not exactly standard from one company to another, so each time a printer/ink company claims a certain density milestone (say Epson’s claim of 2.84 on Ultra Premium Glossy paper), it’s important to do the actual testing based on the more truthful Luminance standard. This way apples are not compared to oranges. We happen to have a brand-new Epson SureColor P800 in our R&D lab and we decided to test our new Piezography Pro ink against Epson inks using an older 3880 printer filled with Piezography Pro inks.
PROFESSIONAL TOOLS
Give artists ink and they’ll make prints. Give artists tools to calibrate that ink, and they’ll produce prints for a lifetime. Piezography Pro Edition comes with hundreds of stock profiles but also makes calibration fully DIY and liberates every artist’s creative potential.
129 STEP ERROR CORRECTOR
The 129 step Error Correction Tool is used to measure a final 129 step target and calibrate the final perfect Piezography curve. This tool is at the heart of the calibration process.
CURVE ADJUSTMENT TOOL
This revolutionary tool allows you to make a Photoshop adjustment curve and then directly burn that adjustment curve into a Piezography “.quad” curve as a “tuning intent.”
DELUXE PIEZOGRAPHY MANUAL
This manual is ever growing. It includes extra chapters on how to Linearize Piezography and how to calibrate the PiezoDN negative.
21 STEP SCANNER TOOL
This tool allows you to print a 21step target, scan it in with a good scanner, and linearize a Piezography curve with the scanned values.
Piezography Pro F.A.Q.
When will with Piezography Pro ink be available? I missed the pre-sale.
They are available now.
When will the Piezography Pro Package be available?
The Piezography Pro Package is available now.
Can I use my existing K7 ink (or my MK or PK channels) for Piezography Pro? I have a lot of ink left over.
No. Piezography Pro ink is entirely new from the ground up including the black inks, gloss optimizer, and everything in between.
Can I use my existing K7 cartridges with the new Pro ink?
We suggest that you keep things clean and organized and get new carts. However, if you are on a budget, you can clean the cartridge out very carefully with distilled water (!!!), let it drop out over night, and fill with Pro ink.
Do I need to PiezoFlush my printer to install this ink?
If you are going from a Piezography K7 to Pro ink set, no. We suggest you PiezoFlush your printer between color and Pro, however, this is entirely up to you. Color staining is not as much of an issue when going from Color to Pro as it was from color to K7, but it’s still there. It takes a lot of ink to completely eliminate color in printer dampers and PiezoFlush can save you money and then you have a flush kit at the ready.
Does PiezoDN Digital Negative curves work with Pro?
Yes. We have built PiezoDN master curves for the Pro inks. We recommend you stick with K7 ink for you digital negatives if this is working for you well right now. But, if you wish to upgrade to the more flexible Piezography Pro inks - check to make sure your printer model is supported by downloading the latest Piezography Curves.
Do I need to let my print dry and then print a GO pass over it like K7 printing?
No. The new Gloss Chroma Optimizer prints at the same time as the ink.
What is the UltraHD Matte Black dMax?
We are measuring a dMax of 1.81 on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag paper with this new ink. This may change slightly when we have the final production ink done but it will be very very dark indeed regardless.