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Paper Chse - Fotospeed Winning Trio - part 2 of 1 2 3 4

by Mike McNamee Published 01/06/2011

We also noted that the PF Lustre is very much tougher than the Platinum pair, so if your prints are to be handled it is a better option. Like all fine art papers the Platinum pair require care; a careless wipe of the hand will mark a print badly, more so when it is right out of the printer and still hardening.

Despite having an OBA lift at 440nm which is larger, the PF Lustre is not the brightest paper under UV light (to the left of the trio in the image). The Platinum Baryta is dead to UV light and contains no optical brightening agents (on the right of the trio in the booth).

Colour Audit

In the absence of profiles for the 4900, we set to and made our own using Monaco Profiler Platinum on a 729 patch target. For auditing we used the HiGAM target series and protocols we have described recently.

The average colour errors ranged from exceptional to very good, the Platinum Baryta stats have only been bested by Epson Traditional Photo Paper (see last issue of Professional Imagemaker). This then was quite a spectacular series of tests, every parameter was better than the average we have measured over the years. We might have expected this from Platinum Baryta but for the statistics to hold up so well in the presence of OBAs was a bit of a bonus with Platinum Gloss and PF Lustre.

Although the statistics are good, each paper has its own distinct character. Without lapsing into the kind of speak used by wine connoisseurs, the warmth of the ivory, Platinum Baryta is reflected in almost perfect scores on skin tones; the accuracy of the greys and the monochrome scales are a bonus. The coolness of the PF Lustre slightly dulls the skin tones although most observers would be untroubled by the look of the print as it matches to the base tone. The skin tone error of PF Lustre was one of the few which exceed a value of 4 ?E00. The Platinum Gloss lies in the middle with a near-neutral look. All would be graded as excellent by the majority of viewers.

The gamut volumes all broke the million-unit barrier - this is becoming a regular feature of the Epson HDR ink set, but even so the paper has to hold the gamut without allowing it to melt away! The Grainger charts were all reasonably smooth with no obvious discontinuities; the grey ramps were completely smooth. The high gamut data set was accurately reproduced; the PF Lustre struggled most but even so the error average was below 3 ?E00.

Overall then this was a firstclass set of data, leaving the user in the happy position of being able to choose on the look of the paper with confidence that it is going to perform well.

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1st Published 01/06/2011
last update 09/12/2022 14:54:24

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