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Carbon Pigment technology, also known as quadtone or "Piezography," was developed as an alternative to the process of making black and white prints with color (CMYK) inks. Carbon-based pigments fade far less from exposure to both visible light and UV than color pigments, and they can be loaded into today's state-of-the-art high resolution printers.
These prints are beautiful to behold, with the ability to display fine shadow and highlight detail and with extremely smooth values. They exceed the tonal rendering capabilities of silver-gelatin prints, and are dotless to the eye. |
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Metamerism |
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| Carbon Pigment prints do not exhibit metamerism, which most of the colored pigment inks possess to some degree. Metamerism is the tendency of a print to shift its color balance according to the type of illumination it is viewed under. This is particularly troublesome with black and white prints made with CMYK inksets, as the smallest variance in color balance is readily detectible. Furthermore, the fade resistence of the different color pigments is not generally equal throughout the inkset. While these differences may be very small, not noticeable in full color prints, it can mean that black and white prints will color shift over time as the weaker pigments fade back, even if slightly. | ||||||||||||
Our Solution |
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| At Cirrus Digital Imaging we print with both Jon Cone's PiezoTone monochromatic inksets and Epson K3. Composed of finely ground carbon particles, they produce prints which are both neutral across the tonal range and free of metamerism. The inksets contain shades of gray and a solid black and therefore have a much longer lifespan than do dye images, current testing has determined their longevity to be in the realm of 100 years and beyond, properly displayed under glass. |
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