Carbon Pigment & Variable-Tone B&W Printing

Grand Teton -- With a the latest Variable Tone Inkset

This comparison shows 4 versions of the same image printed with four different tones. The top two, which are neutral and medium-warm, were printed from grayscale files and can also be printed with Photoshop curves or one of the affordable B&W rips. The neutral tone matches the tone of my lightly-selenium-toned, traditional silver prints. As such, some refer to it as a "selenium" tone print. The medium-warm print is close to what one would expect from warm silver prints.

The tones can be controlled in a number of ways either with print workflow controls (driver sliders, curves, etc.) or by simply changing one or more of the re-usable carts in, for example, the Epson C86.

Depending on the printer and workflow, these predominantly carbon-pigment inksets can be printed by most computer applications, but avid photographers will want Photoshop.

The process of making archival, digital B&W prints is now easy and affordable.

"Carbon on cotton" is now my medium of choice for the most archival B&W images. This combination of carbon image-forming substance and acid-free cotton substrate should be about as archival as any medium ever has been. Our civilization will be lucky to last as long.

For an index of carbon pigment printing information, including details of the inksets and settings, click here.

Links

Return to the front page.

To purchase variable-tone inksets, see the MIS website.

For an excellent Internet forum devoted to black and white digital printing, visit the Digital B&W Print Forum.

If you have any questions about the inksets I use or images on my website, feel free to contact me.