Piezography Selenium inks have a short bath Selenium toning appearance reminiscent of a fiber based silver print. When printed on JonCone Studio Type5 paper with GO, the result is probably the best "silver print" you will have ever seen. This is perhaps our most gorgeous ink set which looks very similar to the type of printing seen in Museum exhibitions.

Piezography Selenium ink is available in six shades, with either a matte black, or a photo black for non-matte which is used in conjunction with the eight position clear Gloss Optimizer. Selenium is both a gloss and matte paper formulation, yet still does not contain any trace dye. Gloss compatibility is arrived at by inclusion of polyesters. The ink however, dries matte on matte papers when used with the matte black. Choosing the set that is correct for you depends upon whether you intend to print matte only or gloss only (including Baryta papers). It is possible to use both blacks but requires an additional black cartridge (you might consider a second set of refillable cartridges to make your life easier and use a different black in each set - while using the same shades of Selenium to make refilling less frequent.

This ink will respond to warmer or cooler papers and will warm or cool accordingly. Piezography Selenium inks have virtually zero metamerism. This is a superior quality ink designed for highest standard black & white printing. The best results are gained by using Piezography made profiles for QuadTone RIP. We include a complete set of matte profiles which are now part of the QuadTone RIP download. Again, consider a second set of cartridges and a bottle of our matte black (Neutral K7 shade 1) so that you can use this printer for both matte or glossy Piezography.

Glossy printing requires use of the K7 Glossy curves and a second printing of the Gloss Optimizer. We keep these curves separate from the download of QTR and you can find them at the Piezography website by clicking here.

If we do not support the type of Glossy paper you prefer to buy and use, we can make custom profiles for you by clicking here.

The Piezography Neutral ink set is designed to be achromatic to the human visual system when printed on a very specific color of white paper. The paper we designed it on is Hahnemuhle Photo Rag.  Innova Photo Smooth Cotton White also has this same tone of white. When viewed under a full spectrum 5000k light source (this is the color of white that a standard human sees as neutral), a photograph on these two papers will appear to be neutral.

Because the inks are neutral, they will pick up the tone of any paper white and shift in that direction. The inks therefore can be made to appear warmer on warmer papers and cooler on cooler papers. A wide range of color tone is possible in this manner. The end result is a perfect marriage of ink and paper. A perfect monotone is produced.

Neutral inks can appear "flatter" to the human perception system because we are not used to looking at neutral grays. There is no darkroom equivalent - yet this remains one of our most popular inks. Neutral inks are now matte and glossy compatible. For matte use with Piezography K7 shade 1 black. For Glossy including baryta use with Piezography MPS shade 1 black and Piezography Gloss Overprint.

Like all Piezography ink sets, this ink is metamerism-free and has an encapsulated pigment particle that is unique amongst all third-party inks and is considered as non-clogging as the OEM. When printing on matte papers, the Neutral K7 Shade 1 black is used. When printing on non-matte papers (including Baryta papers), the MPS Warm Neutral Shade 1 black is used in conjunction with Piezography Gloss Overprint.

This ink set is designed to be used with the Piezography media profiles and QuadTone RIP. Please see the Instructions tab for a full explanation of its use.

You can expect to reach a dMax of 1.65 on matte papers such as JonCone Studio Type2 and Hahnemuhle Photo Rag. When glossy printing according to our directions you can reach dMax levels as high as 2.80. Piezography Glossy produces a finish in which you will not be able to tell where the inks end and the paper begins. When used as directed, it produces a uniform surface without any gloss differential nor bronzing.