November 27, 2024
I've been looking the 26th post over and over, got the photos up in Recent Work and everything looks good. Now I'll give it a while and send a note to Olivia Parker and see what she thinks.
November 26, 2024 (almost Thanksgiving)
DuoTone Prints
These images are scans of prints made with an inkjet printer, they are the product of a black and white image, specialized ink set and printer RIP. The print is singular to the process.
I started making split-toned prints in the late 1970s. I discovered the process by mistakes I made during print processing. My typical print paper was Agfa Portrigra-Rapid a chlolorbromide silver paper that is sensitive to selenium toning. When I washed prints insufficiently, the toning bath was overly warm and/or I left the print in the selenium bath too long there was a reddening of the dark tones leaving the light tones and the black untouched. I found Olivia Parker’s book, “Signs of Life” and realized that split-toning wasn’t an accident and that it could be usefully controlled. Of the few prints that I made only 5 remain for me to consider what I had done. Despite working in digital format I’ve continued to think about split-toning print images, but after several tries in the software realm I gave up trying to reproduce the effect.
I had been interested in trying a multi gray-black ink set printing for some time and decided to try Piezo inks. I prepared a printer to accept a nine-cartridge set and it got me thinking, “What if I put red ink in the 7th or 8thposition of dark gray?” Instead of printing that dark gray, it would print red, just as the selenium toner affected those darker values in a silver print. At least it was worth a try, I could always reclean the printer and start over. As can be seen, the results are a perfect replication of split-tone, but since it’s done in world of ink not silver, I call it DuoTone. The effect can be controlled by adjusting where the dark values are put in the digital image and the print RIP allows for mixing the ink shade scale so the tone can be changed as well as the shade. Olivia noted that she filled trash barrels with prints trying to understand and control the process. My trash reflects the same learning curve, but with patience I have been able to replicate the silver split-tone prints I made. As examples the Mandolin and Zion Reflection Pool are 11 x 14 split-tone prints, that I photographed..
Detailed analysis of DuoTone process
Anyone who wants to attempt DuoToning needs to get into the InkJet Mall (IJM) website and get familiar with Piezography. There’re also interesting things about printers and their maintenance the IJM community forum. You will realize that most of the people who use Piezography are very printer savvy. You will also need to get comfortable taking a risk of using a product that’s not supported (not OEM) by your printer. I have an Epson 3880; it’s long out of production, parts aren’t available and technicians who work on printers are a retiring breed, so if you break yours, you could be done. I recently bought another 3880 in good condition and flushed it, so it is mothballed until my current one dies. Also, IJM isn’t supporting newer Epson printers and Epson has made their newest printer software so only OEM ink will work. I got all that from the IJM website. My experience is only with an Epson 3880.
First Steps
It took me several years of procrastination and study to take the first step, buying a Piezoflush kit. Your printer will need to have the old ink in the 9 ink lines flushed out. Getting that process done will get you used to the idea of filling cartridges and getting them to work in your printer.
I flushed the old ink out of the lines the simplest way I could think of and that was to just print the ink out. I made a rectangle image 7” x 10“ filled with the colors of the cartridges, C-Y-M, 50% C and 50% M and 30K light-light-black, 60% light-black and PK and MK (= 9.) I just printed pages until the flush (it’s pink) prints the page completely pink. To do that I used (many) sheets of 20 lb Bond paper, BTW, it’s recommended to use bond for all the flush tests.
The better way to PiezoFlush is getting the printer to do the flush, but Epson doesn’t have that function in the printer software. What is a needed is a technicians maintenance program that does what is called an InitFiIl. Called Init Fill because when the new printer is turned on for the first time with ink cartridges the printer pumps ink through the lines to the heads. InitFiIl is a program download ($) file that tells the printer to run that program and flushes the lines. It only runs on a PC, so I bought a 2016 $125 Dell laptop and learned how to install the latest Windows 10 and then install the program and get it to work (it does!) Despite the problems of getting the InitFiIl up and running it was still faster than printing the lines out. Also, once you’ve jumped in and you’ve got it working you will end up using it for deep cleaning the heads. At some point you will or have seen, after several cleaning cycles can’t clean up an ink channel, the error code, “print head can’t be cleaned seek maintenance.” In my experience running an InitFiIl fixed that problem. I can run InitFiIl with Piezoflush and it allows me to store a printer for months. My 3880 was stored for 18 months with only printing a nozzle check a couple of times.
The above is meant to discourage the faint-of-heart. The easy part is to reload the ink and start experimenting.
Split-Tone vs. DuoTone
Split-tone selenium silver prints have the characteristic of the dark gray tones turning a red, the shade. Looking close at a split-toned silver print you will see a band of what should have been a dark gray has turned red, and a gradual shading of the tones lighter and darker than a “maximum” red shade out to a light gray or very dark gray and black. This shading can be seen in the pool of my Zion Reflection Pool silver print that I photographed and printed. The light gray and black are not affected and there is a gradual shading brighter of the selenium red tone.
What makes the multi-ink or DuoTone prints mimic selenium silver is effectively the same process in that there is one pure “red” printed by one cartridge. In my case I used the Warm-Dark as the red cartridge (inks described next, below). As the image gets darker, or lighter other ink cartridges are printed giving a graduation from one ink to another shading the red between black and light gray. I’m interested in replicating split-tone sliver selenium prints, but it would be just as easy to split the tones at the mid-tone rather than the dark.
Piezography Printing
There are two parts to Piezography printing. The 9 cartridges of ink and the software that runs the printing. The ink is Piezography Pro K9 (9 ink set Epson 3880.) It has 2 sets of 3 ink cartridges, Cool set: light, medium, and dark; Warm set: light, medium, dark; there are two blacks, MK and PK. The 9th cartridge is a clear coat, more on clear coat at the end.
The print program is called QuadTone RIP and is developed and sold by another company that works with Ink Jet Mall.
The complete Piezo printing process is described in detail in the Piezography on-line Manual so the rest here is my process and comments for DuoTone.
Printing is controlled by QuadTone RIP that shows up as a “printer” in the drop-down menu of the print window of both Lightroom and Photoshop (Printer: Quad3880-Pro).
My interpretation of how the QuadTone RIP works lacks technical sophistication but I have simplified it for my use.
There are two variables in QuadTone RIP. First, the RIP has a mixer that will be described in detail later. The ink mixer allows you to mix and vary the output by ink tone; Cool, Neutral and Warm. Since there are only 2 (warm and cool) sets of 3 cartridges (as noted earlier), the neutral set is created by mixing cool and warm. The second variable that the RIP controls is how the ink is mixed to give a consistent result across many papers. If you were printing the same image and needed to print it on two different papers it would be difficult to get the two prints to look the same, and print paper profiles, ICC Profiles solve that problem. QuadTone RIP has many (50+) profiles, for nearly all the photo art papers. The coating on one inkjet print paper takes ink differently than another paper so to get equal results from a variety of papers the ICC profile are described as curves that vary the amounts of ink to suit the paper. That means that each ICC profile will change the tone value (K) where “pure” warm-dark (or red) is printed. While the profiles are very specific to obtain the results as originally designed, I don’t use them that way. I’m looking for how each Profile changes the placement of the red ink. To understand the way a Profile affects a print I make test prints with several, many test prints. I also make tone targets prints.
Tone Targets
Controlling the placement of the red cartridge ink in an image is done by experiment, but a good starting point is knowing what tone (K) is going to print pure red. To do this I’ve made an image file with a set of rectangles filled with various shades of black to white or 100K black to Zero K or white. A target sheet.
Targets are useful to use to find the places denoted in K value in a digital image file that will print as “red” or some mixture of red. My target isn’t that refined, and my prints are made from printing and tweaking and printing, tweaking, etc. It can be seen in my printed targets that generally the red cartridge is centered on 85-88 K and black is only black at 100 K; the red is absent from gray in the value of low 70 K. All of that to say that the tone charts give the ability to visualize what will be black, red, gray or white.
It is also useful to know these points as you can use the color picker in PS and view the K value in the “INFO” window pallet to identify specific areas tone value. I usually use this detailed look after several test prints. Recap: there are three elements to work with; first, the tone value in the image, second the QuadTone RIP mixer and third the ICC profile in QuadTone RIP.
QuadTone RIP Mixer Part 1
The RIP software was made to allow prints to be made warm like sepia, neutral, or cool toned by selecting that ink set in K9 Pro inks, warm and cool or warm+cool = neutral. The RIP allows you to mix each - warm, neutral, cool by Highlight, Middle and Shadows, by %. So it’s possible to have warm highlights, neutral mids and cool shadows and by some % of each. You must see the software to appreciate how it works. It is genius for DuoTone.
Work FLow
I do all my general processing in Lightroom. I use Photoshop for destructive/additive editing where that is appropriate. When I have a file, I feel is complete I make a new photoshop file “Edit-in, with LR adjustments” save it, then in LR I rename it “DUOTONE PRINT plus the old file name” so that I know this is a file adjusted for DuoTone printing only. Further changes to that file are done in LR. Changes needed in PS require recreating/renaming the file in PS and deleting the old one. To print I use “edit-in with LR adjustments” and select “PS.” I always close this file and DO NOT SAVE otherwise you end up with another file and confusing multiple images in LR you don’t want.
Printing
Every photo that is DuoTone on my website is a scan of a print or a photo of a print. This is a print process only.
I make initial test prints on “Neehan” Cardstock, 110 lb 8.5 x 11 sheets. This paper is about the same thickness as fine art paper (Epson Canson, Hahnemuhle) but it costs 1/10 as much. It is an uncoated paper, like typing bond so it doesn’t give a “final result appearance” you will get with any photo paper, but it is good to see how the red integrates into the photo content. When I’m just trying an image to see how it fits DuoTone, this is my first test. Most images don’t get past this test. However, it’s good to save and label a print for future evaluation.
When I start using photo paper, I print what could be considered “test strips.” I print 4 photos per 8.5 x 11 sheet. The print window in PS allows making an image sized ¼ paper and I put it in one corner and move it around the sheet. It’s important to remember to move the image in the window and put the paper in the same way every time (something I remind myself every time.)
QuadTone Mixer Part 2
I mark a print settings code on every print I save. I save all the printed test strips that describe the experimentation progress. The settings include the ICC profile and the choices of RIP mixer. The RIP mixer has 9 settings that can be varied by %. Cool/Neutral/Warm for each of Highlights/Middle/Shadows. So, a code that has 100% warm in H/M/S would look like x-x-100_x-x-100_x-x-100 and (ICC profile) Hahn PhotoPearl. An all-cool print code would be 100-x-x_100-x-x_100-x-x and ICC profile. Without that coding all the test prints are useless because you need to reference what you have done to make relevant changes. You will see those coded notes on some of the sheet scans in the photos. The “all warm” will have bright reds and the “all cool” no red at all, just blue gray. X-100-x_x-100-x_x-100 -x will have purple/ dark reds in the 97-70 K range and neutral gray or black. See the Target prints in the photos.
Clear Coating
All Quad Tone ICC profiles for gloss, pearl, baryta will print a clear coat over the whole sheet of paper even when you are printing just the ¼ corner. That kills the sheet of paper for further printing as the coating doesn’t take the ink for the remainder of the sheet. When I first started and realized the problem, I sucked all the clear coat out of the cartridge and printed the lines empty and that fixed the problem. But I’m not sure how the clear coat dries in the head and affects that channel in the long run. I’ve been printing ICC “Uncoated Master” or Lasal Matte, both of those don’t clear coat. But those don’t look like ICC Photo Pearl, my normal ICC for final printing. As of this note I’m going to eliminate the clear coat. I have to flush the heads soon anyway and that will clean the line and head, and when I put an empty cartridge in, the head will have flush in it that won’t print and that should be good for mothballing.
One more issue; I’ve just been trying to print a match for an image I’ve printed several times. I could not get it to print like my “match print.” I remembered two things from IJM Piezography Manual. First, they recommend shaking the cartridge frequently because their pigment settles. Two, the IJM chips bypass the Epson “Supply Levels” and you have no way to know when a cartridge is empty without checking it. I had 3 empty cartridges. That is not the way to get a print match! Take out the cartridges and shack and check levels on a regular schedule.
Good Luck
December 12, 2023
I left the dots at the end of the September note. I got that far and planned on finishing it the next day……
It’s been 3 months.
I added several juried selections, the most exciting was getting 3! in the Your Daily Photo site. Ann Jastrab was the juror for the month of September, and she told me I should submit a few images. She selected one and then YDP selected another. YDP has “calls” for selected topics, and they had one for “Newspapers.” I couldn’t think of a newspaper image so just put in 3 I like. I was selected one more time. I put in 3 of my 1970s rock and roll artists, The Doors, and 2 of Frank Zappa. We’ll see..
I have worked on the web site for several days over several weeks and have updated some things and added or moved around others. There is now a Yosemite, a Southwest and Pueblo page. A few new family photos in Ephemera. A site that has too much is growing bigger.
September 9, 2023
I'm listening to a series of Detrich Buxtehude organ pieces and contemplating the nearly year since I put in the last note. I took note of the work it would take to mount 2 shows in 2023. It's a good thing I started working on them in December, it took my full efforts to produce matted prints for each. Fortunately 4 prints found their way into new homes including 2 of the oversize prints of the Tower Theater. I've put the whole show and some photos from the installation and artists reception. I have also a few new selections from juried gallery shows. Two were in SEC4P shows, a couple more in the Black Box and Center for Photographic Arts Auction. I've managed to have 24 selections to date in 7 different galleries. I'm satisfied to find selections from my earliest work from 1970 to iPhone camera this year.
We spent most of the summer in California, 7 weeks is a long time to be away from my studio. The most important issue to being gone is how to mothball 2 ink jet printers. The old 3880 was fairly easy ......
November 26th, 2022
Back in the workspace full time. Submitted for 4 shows and made 2. The Street Sweeper, Carnaby St, London 1970 will be in the
Southeast Center for Photography Gallery (SEC4P) in South Carolina in December. 2 were selected for the Black Box Gallery in Portland, OR, Calle de San Sebastián, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2004 will be in the gallery space and Dorm Apartments, Eugene Oregon 2022 in the online gallery. I'm amazed to get 2 at the Black Box. I've put the photos in at the bottom of RECENT WORK / Fall 2022 Gallery Shows. I'm waiting for the results of my submittal to the Grants Pass Museum of Art for 2023-24 solo shows. Grants Pass is 45 minutes north of Ashland on I-5. I have one more call to submit to SEC4P in December and then a Members Show in Santa Fe, no jury, that makes it easy and nice. Starting the process of printing, matting and framing the pieces for Bloomsbury and Viewpoint. 35 pieces is a lot of work.
Tom.
October 11, 2022
I have made my first solo showing. Viewpoint Photographic Art Center in Sacramento, May 10 thru June 3. I am planning on being at the Artists Reception scheduled for Sunday May 21st (to be confirmed.) I will have about 20 photos in the "Step Up" room. The back room. My first solo, I can't be disappointed that it won't be in the street facing space. But, whoever is in that space had better be good or the public may spend their time in my exhibit. I plan on being great. (Ha). The name of my exhibit is from the book (BOOKS) My Familiar Places. Since I lived in Sacramento and just an hour west in Vallejo for nearly all of my life I have chosen photos from the large format negatives I made in the Sacramento Valley and Crockett. (Carquinez Bridge series) I'm looking forward to the exhibit, not so much the hours it will take to print and mat 20 photos.
I have been asked to put together a show in the place I had my first show (October 2019) Bloomsbury Blends here in Ashland. That show will be installed for March 2023. Many thanks to Kimberly for asking me. It will be curated from the 1970s Denmark/Europe group of street photos. The space will hold only a dozen or so prints. It will be fun to put together. I haven't printed many of that group and as they are "street photography" with a lot less black area to print, they will be easier to get done.
Submitting to Calls for Gallery shows is a time consuming business. Since it does take a lot of effort and success of having one photo selected for a show is low (ish) (I've had really great success and hope it continues.) I'm going to put the work I am submitting up in RECENT WORK. By "Call" and date. I can get something out of the work even if I am not in the selections.
The first is the 2022 Crocker-Kingsley I just submitted.
Artists Statement:
During the pandemic a photographic expedition was walking in my neighborhood. I’ve always been fascinated by the abstracts created by everyday activities on the built environment. Pavement and concrete that has been thickly coated with repainting over years has a curious quality. Chipped off pieces have the thickness of broken pottery, layer upon sedimentary layer it begins to tell a story all its own. Bright yellow safety paint, chipped, cracked, broken, then repainted with another sagging, flowing coat, like donut glazing, mundane but beautiful.
After months of walking along the same streets I saw the traditions of abstraction and minimalism in the random marks made by the tread of tires scraping along the curb faces of distressed yellow paint. They are bold aesthetic statements that allow multiple interpretations but still retain the basic values of a photograph.
Tom..................
September 16, 2022
Mid-July started what could be called a vacation. Retired in Ashland has felt like vacation so I will just say we weren't home for a few weeks.
The last two weeks of July we were in Eugene, Oregon at the University of Oregon, Hayward Field for the Track and Field (Athletics) World Championships. The first time they have been held in the USA and only 150 miles from my home.
Walking around the streets of Eugene yielded some worthwhile photos and some have been added to RECENTS. It follows that being with 10,000 screaming track fans from 40+ countries I could - and did get Covid. Fortunately, the "light" version, but 10 days of quarantine cut the 4 weeks we were to spend on the cool California coast down to three weeks. I took about 40 lbs of camera gear with me but used only the Noblex 150 Pro panoramic camera I bought in 2015. I wanted to expose as many rolls of film as possible, just to see if I knew how to load and use it. Loading a Noblex, forwarding the film and unloading it is a new and partially intimidating experience, especially if you don’t want to expose the film before or after making desired exposures. I was partially successful. There’s room for improvement. Three images using the Noblex in RECENTS / PANORAMIC FILM were made in California and another from earlier here at home. A fascinating old technology, the Noblex 150 camera has a rotating lens that creates a 150-degree panoramic on 120 film, check it out on line.
I've added some of a new series to RECENTS / SIX FEET OF SEPARATION. An ongoing project that documents the remnants of the separation, isolation and other measures we were asked to adhere to in public spaces. Like the pandemic itself, the quarantine and disruption of life are slowly disappearing. Before they dissolve altogether, I am searching for them or finding them as I move about my now, more normal life.
Another addition to RECENTS are photos made at LAKE SHASTA in northern California. I drive past Lake Shasta on every trip to California. The fall of 2021 the lake was unbelievably low and the orange soils exposed in the setting sun were breathtaking, in both the beauty of the scene and the tragic consequences of the driest years the state has known.
A series of photos I call STREET SEEN are now in RECENTS. I'm fascinated by the patterns and designs created by road workers spraying oil to fill cracks in streets here in Ashland. That series extended into the quarantine; my daily dog walk around the neighborhood was my only outing. On those outings I noticed that the black rubber of truck tires scraping on the yellow painted curbs made patterns I could see as abstract expressionist images. Street Seen now includes many other subjects, but all have been "seen" while I have been walking around town.
May 31st, 2022. My photo, Pastel House in Ashland that was selected for exhibit at Black Box Gallery has been added to About, Jurors Selections.
May 14, 2022. Denmark 1970-1972 Folio
I just rearranged and added photos to better represent the group titles and fill out the stories portrayed. Have a look and enjoy!
May 2, 2022. I finally have a better photo for my About page. Thanks to my good friend Dennis Scott..