The Big City

This is a such a great idea, I’m appalled that this is the first time I’ve ever read about it.

You know how if you try a print a photo in black and white on your inket it always looks terrible? And that’s because the printer’s trying to create all the shades of black in your picture by making different sized dots of black ink. No matter how clever the software is you can always see this ‘dithering’, especially in mid tones.

So if you’re feeling keen you might make your picture into a duotone or even a quadtone in Photoshop. That uses the other coloured inks in the printer to make shades of not-quite-black which improves matters a bit if you don’t mind the picture being a bit brown or blue looking.

What Piezography does is take that quadtone idea a step further. You replace the coloured inks in your printer with three shades of grey ink. So now your printer can’t print in colour but it can produce stunning black and white prints. The pigment based inks are also long lasting; the manufacturers claim they will fade by a maximum of 5% in 100 years.

Unfortunately my printer is slightly too old to use this system but it’s got me thinking - why not mix up my own inks and do the same thing?

Piezography Home Page