Paul, Guys Something to think about with third party papers on <archival> printers.
The printer manufacturer has- we hope - made every effort to optimise the combination of ink and paper. When ink goes onto paper it reacts with the coating, so the coating could be said to be half the equation in print life. I think it's important to be aware that the stated life for prints from Epson printers is for EPSON ink and paper TOGETHER. If you change the paper you may alter the print life considerably. Until someone like Wilhelm reports on that specific combination, who knows. <http://www.wilhelm-research.com> Epson seem to approve Somerset Velvet Enhanced for the 7600 and 9600, although I was told they don't have any stock here in the UK yet, neither do the UK drivers have a setting for that paper, so who kinows if it's coming. SomersetVE works very well on the 9600, I made profiles for Chris Simpson's 9600 recently and we were all blown away by the monochrome and tinted results. So, once the machine is profiled it can print totally neutral monochrome, something of an achievement. That's with no noticeable illuminant metamerism, on the example I saw [matte inks]. I do note that the Wilhelm Imaging research Institute has a longevity report on the 9600 where the Somerset comes out at 57 years under glass. Note though that they call the paper <<Somerset velvet For Epson>>, it could be a special coating foir those Ulytrachrome inks. [more about metamerism at http://www.neilbarstow.co.uk/links.html ]. I made some profiles today for a 7600 with Matte Black ink and Lyson's 300g Smooth Fine Art paper, lovely paper, but who can tell how well the ink and coating will get on in the long term. I noted a pleasingly larger plotted gamut than with Somerset too [in Colorthink]. [I never did think Somerset was top in the gamut stakes] On 14/12/02 at , Paul Freeman wrote: > > I presume that you have tried using the Grey Balancer? Did it have > any effect at all. The graybalancer seems a crude and difficult tool, and who wrote that manual? > > If you don't have any joy you might want to investigate the Hahnemule > photo rag paper. I've seen some neutral 2100 b&w prints on that > medium. I think you should consider a custom profile in circumstances like this, and who better to make you one remotely than our own Thomas Holm at www.pixl.dk. He has many years experience at profilemaking, believe me - it makes a difference. You can spend a LOT of time and money, and even perhaps compromise printer performance trying out different papers and making testprint after testprint. I know because I went through all this about 4 years back. I appreciate that all we photographers are tweakers but working with a non linear printer without a proper profile is a serious waste of time and energy. It is almost impossible to optimise manually for every image type. Remember, I tried it, and I'm very patient. Perhaps learn a bit about what Colour Management can do for you. Get a quality profile for screen and printer, get some prints made and go out and earn money taking photographs would be my advice. But then, to paraphrase Mandy Rice Davis <He would say that wouldn't he>. Regards NeilB - - - - Consulting in Imaging & Colour Management - - - - custom scanner and printer profiles, training on Trident & Imacon Scanning - - - - - we supply Gretag and eyeOne, also XRite & OptiCal - - - - - - p:44 (0)1273 774704 m:44 (0)7778 160201 http://www.neilbarstow.co.uk/ http://www.apple.com/uk/creative/neilbarstow/ =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
