Digital Negative printer / ink advice

Hello all,

Finally bit the bullet on a printer for digital negatives - I'm using it for platinotype and kallitype printing. It is an old Epson 3800 that I got for song. Working fine except... the photo glossy ink path refuses to work. Dead as a doornail. So my question is: Can I get around the problem? Are there ink sets and associated drivers that can compensate for or side-step the issue? Thanks for the help!

Check out QuadToneRIP as I believe it allows you to control each individual ink channel.

Does the printer still work with MK ink?

If so have you tried a negative using MK ink?

Many years ago someone suggested to me that MK ink was better for digital negative since it was denser in the UV that PK ink. I have no clue if that is true, but I have been making digital negatives for cyanotype with MK ink in a P800 on Pictorico OHP for roughly a year now. It works just fine for my purposes. I do this because most of my printing on paper is with MK and I did not want to have to switch to print negatives.

Otherwise, talk with the Piezography folks and see what they say about using K6 or K7 inks for negatives. Then you would only need 6 or 7 working channels and the Quadtone RIP to remap channels (as Alan suggests above).

If it is any help, I use my 3880 with the Epson inks and Pictorico transparent film for platinum/palladium printing and set it for "luster" .. i duplicate the hue and tonality of HP5 developed in PMK Pyro. It works fine so I stick with the Epson K3 inks. When making positive digital prints , I convert the RGB scans to gray scale then to a duotone setting that I like then back to RGB to print on Hahnemuhle Glossy Fine Art Paper with the printer still set on "luster". This makes a slight warm neutral black tonality that very closely matches the silver gelatin prints i make in the wet darkroom.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

http://www.sculptureandphotography.com/

From my first-hand experience with Epson P400, I can vouch for MK being more UV-dense than the PK. The disadvantage was it took longer to dry to touch so it needed a little more care to handle. The P400 ink-set is different from the 3800 as well as the newer P600/800 printers, but I would expect the relationship holds for those too.

Just a point of caution about not wanting to switch back and forth between PK and MK, I have read that if the printer is kept on one channel for a long time, the other channel could get clogged up or the switching mechanism itself can get frozen. So it is advisable to perform switching every once in a while.

:Niranjan.