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.
All black and white prints are printed on the EPSON R1800 using one shade of carbon pigment ink. Custom created printer profiles are used for each paper type. The tone of the print is shifted by using different types of fine art paper.
Carbon Pigment Prints
Most of the digital black and white printing approaches use carbon pigments as their base because a good carbon pigment is vastly more lightfast than the average color pigment. Most of the popular B&W printing approaches, also use amounts of color inks because the dilute carbon needed to make older printers capable of prinitng smooth prints was too warm. Thus color inks were used to get the print to an acceptable tone. Now, the tiny 1.5 pico liter drops of the Epson R1800 printers, in addition to the neutral "Eboni" carbon pigment ink , have given us the ability to print photo quality, neutral B&W prints with no color inks. This results in prints with the best lightfastness and longevity. It also avoids the tone shifts that color inks will cause as the prints age and the color pigments fade at different rates.
Archival pigment prints offer a full-color, continuous tone exhibition alternative to conventional and digital c-prints. The pairing of 100% cotton, acid-free papers with the latest carbon based ink distribution printers has produced the first truly unique, digitally produced photographic exhibition option since the introduction of the modern day chromogenic print. These prints offer greater UV stability and increased archival longevity over chromogenic RA-4 process color prints and are readily accepted by museums, galleries, and collectors worldwide.