Because of our belief in high quality printing and to meet the demands standards of our clients, Firefly Editions uses only the highest quality materials in the production of Fine Art prints. Click on the links below for information:

The paper we use in InkJet printing

Inkjet Printing at Firefly Editions

Our primary workhorse printer is an Epson 7000 Stylus Pro.

The EPSON Stylus Pro 7000 Series is a heavy duty professional printer, capable of producing exhibition quality prints on a wide range of media up to 24" wide at the standard resolution of 720 x 1440dpi. The piezographBW process improves on this resolution dramatically giving an effective resolution well above 2000dpi.

Ink System
We utilize a set of QuadTone Piezography™BW carbon based black inks from Cone Editions for all of our black and white work.

Piezography™BW inks use micro-dispersion carbon black pigment which is capable of staying in suspension and is water resistant upon drying.

"We do know ... that carbon black pigment is the best method of fixing an image digitally, and it was selected to provide a historical longevity factor in relation to environmental pollution, moisture and light" *

These inks in combination with the Hahnemüle papers provide a very rich set of blacks in the image and a tremendous tonal range.

Piezography™inks are also not subject to the metamerism found in dye based inks nor dye/pigment inks. Metamerism is the tendency for an ink system to appear different under varying light conditions. For example, Piezography™ prints do not change dramatically under tungsten, fluorescent and incandescent light sources.

This process does not print gray scales as droplets of ink as is done with the standard Epson print drivers but as a continuous tone, resulting in really excellent blacks and an extended tonal range that is unmatched.

Printing Software RIP
We utilize the Piezography™BW printing system from Cone-Editions. This systems is capable of producing exhibition quality prints. Its standard features are continuous-tone, image permanence, tonal control and exquisite aesthetic appearance. Its unique advantage over traditional darkroom printing is a longer dynamic range than available from wet process printing.

"Piezography™ has the longest dynamic range of any digital or traditional process. This is a huge claim. However, film has a shorter dynamic range than the human eye. Photographic paper has a shorter dynamic range than film. The results of both can be plotted as an "S" curve in which the highlight and shadows are subject to compression. Piezography™ when used with its internal tonal management system of media profiles renders a tonal linerization from dMax to dMin. It has many more stops available to the traditional film-based photographer than does darkroom printing paper. For the digital photographer, Piezography can render a dynamic range close to that of human perception. Several digital cameras have been developed that can provide clean digital information which matches the advanced properties of Piezography. However, even ordinary digital cameras can be used to produce prints of unusually long tone.'" *

• 8 and 16-bit per channel hextone engine
• Multi-linearinterpolating scale for accuracy
• Adaptive, stochastic error diffusion a algorithms
• Prints can be 23.5" wide by any length

File Formats
We can accept files in the following formats for printing

Standard File Formats:

•  JPG Compressed (JPG)
•  Tagged Image File Format (TIF)
•  Compuserve GIF
•  Bitmap (BMP)
•  Kodak Formats (PCD / FPX)
•  Windows Metafile (WMF)
•  Photoshop (PSD)
•  Portable Network Graphics (PNG)
•  Truevision TARGA (TGA)
•  Encapsulated PostScript (EPS)
•  SUN Raster Format (RAS)
•  Macintosh PICT Format (PCT)

Extended Image File Format Modules with Multi-Channel Support:

•  JPEG Compressed (JPG)
  
  
•  TIFF with XZW Compression and 8/16 bit per channel capability (TIF)
  
  
• RAW Format with 8/16 bit per channel capability (RAW)

Imaging Software

We use PhotoShop v7.0 for all image editing running on a Windows 2000 workstation and use the PiezographyPro™BW software RIP running on a Windows 2000 print server server to print the images.

(We have facilities available to read Macintosh disks)

Matting Information

We can cut mats and mount the print on a backing board.

•   We use white Nelson & Bainbridge Acid Free 100% Rag Artcare Museum Board for all mats and backing boards.
  
  
•   Mats are available in 4 and 8 ply boards, all backing boards are 4 ply board.
  
  
•   All hinging of the mat to the backing board is done with linen tape and removable glue.
  
  
•   Prints can be mounted to the backing board via linen hinges or dry press mounted with archival dry mount tissues.