Hi all,
My name is Angel. I work for HP as a colour scientist and I have devised the solution for the HP Z3200 printers that allows the users the creation of digital negatives to make prints with alternative processes.
As David has previously written, yesterday I asked him about some darkroom set up and he told me about this discussion thread.
I dont have much time to answer all of you, but I would like to clarify how all this stuff has been created and evolved in order to dispel doubts.
My wife and I have been working in photography for a long time. We began to work with platinum/palladium eight years ago and since then weve been dealing with the same problems that everybody has to make a good negative. BTW: You can see some of our work in
www.convincingblack.com
I joined HP in 2003 and when designing the Z3200 printer I worked on it as a colour engineer.
Not to mention the fact that I was printing my own digital negatives on other printers, creating curves to compensate the actinic response of the inks as everybody does. But then, I began to wonder if modifying the way we (HP) put ink on the paper and using some specific colours was possible to create a linear ramp in UV output as a response to a linear input.
I began to work on it as skunk work in my spare time analyzing the spectral response and grain created by every ink combination and I discovered that green ink was perfect for this purpose. I wanted to share this, but I realized that it was impossible to do it without changing the ink separation inside the printer.
Of course, a big company like HP will not modify an entire firmware and pipeline (implying the work of hundreds of employees) only because a crazy engineer had this idea. So I began to work again in a much simpler way to do it without changing any piece of firmware or software. I must say here that a lot of my colleagues from different areas supported me and helped me a lot.
Finally I was able to pack everything in a paper package. It is a file describing ink response, colour separation, drying time for each paper. If you want more technical details, it can be found in the document that David pointed out.
After this step, I needed a lot of time to explain to marketing, management and other colleagues why this was so important for the Photo community. All of them realized about it (showing some platinum prints was a big help, as people were amazed about the results).
I know that it is not rocket science. I only tried to share with you what I had discovered taking advantage of my position in a big company as HP. Personally, I must thank HP all the passion and support that they put in a project that will not give to the company big revenues. You will be surprised about how many people inside HP love photography.
I also know that is a big printer not affordable for everybody, but it is the only one that I know how to tweak. If you are wondering if you can do something similar with an external spectrophotometer, a RIP, the same printer and calibrating the system by yourself, the answer is yes. My goal was to save time, efforts and money to anyone having access to this printer.
If youre happy with your printer making digital negatives, I will advise to continue with it. If youre planning to buy a new one, I would advise you that (if possible) try to test which one is best for you.
If finally you are using this solution and it is working for you, please, let me know about it. I have never been so proud before, as when Elliot Erwitt explained to us how happy he was after looking at his images printed with this solution.
Personally I think that hybrid photo+digital+analog is the future, so lets go for it.