News

Lyson Black & White Imaging System

Shutterbug Staff | Aug 24, 2004

Lyson, Inc., a leading provider of inks, media, and related products to the printing, photography, graphic arts, and other allied industries, has introduced the Daylight Darkroom digital black & white printing system, providing photographers what they have long desired-- the ability to accurately mirror traditional darkroom techniques, including silver halide printing, with digital images and an inkjet printer. The complete Lyson Daylight Darkroom System consists of:

- Daylight Darkroom Quad Black inks in cartridges or a bulk feed system
- Daylight Darkroom print driver software
- The Lyson Darkroom™ range of inkjet media
- A set of Lyson cleaning cartridges for removal of standard color inks from the printer
- Lyson PrintGuard™ protection spray (optional).

The Daylight Darkroom system is being introduced for use with the Epson Stylus Pro 2200 and Stylus Pro 7600/9600 printers. Plans are to extend the system for use with the new Epson Stylus Pro 4000 and the most recent Canon printers over the next two quarters.

"Printing high quality monochrome images using a normal color ink set has always been problematic," says Tony Martin, president of Lyson, Inc. "By developing a true monochrome print driver along with media featuring a new proprietary coating, and by leveraging these developments with our superior ink technology, we've been able to overcome the historical barriers to exceptional digital black and white printing. The results of this system are stunning--a real breakthrough-- and this has been confirmed by virtually every photographic eye that has examined them."

While the introduction of seven and eight channel inkjet printers has expanded the possibilities for digital black and white printing, the limiting factor to leveraging this technology has been that OEM supplied printer driver software have been designed for color imaging, not black and white. While good results were achievable with superior ink sets (e.g., Lyson's Quad Black and Small Gamut), truly exceptional output required the development of a print driver specifically for black and white output.

"The Lyson Daylight Darkroom driver provides complete control over every ink channel on the printer to provide absolute continuous tone printing," notes Martin. "The way that the driver and ink system work in conjunction with each other means that the printer is using a minimum of four shades of black and a maximum of seven shades of black at any moment during the printing process."

The driver has two distinct but linked modules-- Print Pro and Profile Creator. Print Pro provides all the features of a standard print driver, as well as extras like image sizing and rotation, along with a print preview screen. It accepts two separate profiles that can be blended together in infinite combinations, a useful feature for fine tuning the final look of the image. Profile Creator enables users to quickly make or edit their own profiles for Print Pro using simple test target prints. Linearization of profiles can also be achieved by using a standard flat bed scanner.

The Lyson Daylight Darkroom Driver is currently Mac OSX-based and comes with warm, neutral, and cool profiles for all Lyson media. A Windows XP version of the driver will be available next quarter.

A full range of Lyson media has been fully tested with the Lyson Quad Black inks for guaranteed longevity. This includes the new 320 gsm Darkroom gloss and 220 gsm Darkroom textured matte. These two papers mimic high end fiber based silver prints and provide a finished result heretofore not possible with inkjet printing. Independent life expectancy testing is currently in process, but according to Martin is expected to far exceed the currently 100+ years indoor display life for Quad Black inks gauged by Wilhelm Imaging research.

Contact: www.lyson.com