When inkjet printers first arrived, the ink was not very lightfast, so I only used the small sized printers for letters, printouts of news items and some photographs. I am still not impressed with the light fastness of dyebased ink, but would certainly like to try pigmented ink available for other wide format  printers. I have HP Designjet 110plus, which I used mostly to produce big enough transparencies for exposure to positive litho plates, using the black pigmented ink that is available for it.
Recently I have decided to experiment with the printer by printing out full color images around 18 x 24 inches unto rag papers coated with inkAID.  These will be the background for farther addition of color litho ink using waterless lithography.  If the images work out, I may invest in a printer capable of using pigmented inks and a bulk ink supply system. I will continue with the birefringent images I experimented with back in the early 80’s and before, using Cibachrome positive to positive prints.  I published an article in LEONARDO at the time on how I also used the concept to make exciting television show openings, as well as the Cibachrome prints.

Today with high quality digital cameras and a macro lens, I can better produce an image to my liking than with the original enlarger method, and can modify in more in Photoshop.  My hope is that the final prints comes up to my expectations and that I can somehow afford to change to a printer using pigmented ink.  If there was pigmented color ink available for the Designjet 110plus, I would be quite happy to work with the present  printer. Any ideas?

Posted by Nik Semenoff on October 4th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
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