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Paper Chase - Ilford Galerie - part 2 of 1 2 3

by Mike McNamee Published 01/08/2007

Galerie Professional Smooth High Gloss

This is a 235gsm media reminiscent of Ilford CibaChrome with a very high gloss. It is a thin paper with a calliper of 19microns and requires quite careful handling to avoid scratching and (when mounted) bobbly surfaces. There seems little point in ultra gloss surfaces unless you mount them is such a way that the fantastic sheen is preserved. Our slightly old sample was quite curled and clattered into the ink heads of the test Epson 3800, leaving slightly scruffy edges.

We tested using the profile IGSHM_EP3800SPPn_1206. icc, using 2880dpi, Premium Semigloss photo paper as the media setting, High Speed and Black Point Compensation turned on, with Relative Colorimetric rendering intent.

These high-gloss media are sometimes a little slow to dry and so we took the print directly out of the printer and had it in the spectro within 12 seconds and then measured at intervals to observe the dry-down effects. The print was essentially colour stable after 100 seconds although the surface was a little delicate for at least 15 minutes, the weight of the spectro was enough to leave an indent. There was no evidence of gloss differential or bronzing in the print which was bright and clean with no obvious flaws. This was confirmed later by the statistical data. Despite containing optical brighteners, which moved all the tones towards the slightly blue base colour, the average error was a very acceptable 6.5 Lab ΔE/3.55ΔE2000 across the Macbeth Chart. The skin tones were desaturated as they were mapped towards the blue base and just a little rotated towards red (not detectable to the eye). The Dmax was 2.12 and the metamerism very low at 0.65 (50% grey D65 to Tungsten A).

Overall then this was an impressive paper with probably the highest gloss on the market and no flaws that we could measure. It seemed to match the K3 inks well and the results were good for a generic profile onto a brightened paper.

The Lab plots for the base white tone of the media. Smooth Fine Art stands alone, on the cream side of neutral. Pearl, Gloss and High Gloss are clustered together as cooler blue and the Multi Use and HW Matte are more magenta blue with their stronger OBA loadings.

Galerie Professional Smooth Gloss Paper and Smooth Pearl Paper

This is a gloss media and shares the 280gsm with its Smooth Pearl sibling along with a seemingly identical coating. The similarities in the papers are so striking as to be worth relating the statistics - if we had not checked we might have thought we had put the same specimen through the spectro twice!

Overall then you can mix and match the three surfaces, assured that prints will look absolutely identical apart from the surface finish - quite an achievement in coating consistency, profiling and indeed 3800 printing.

Smooth Fine Art Paper

There are three variants in the Ilford range, Smooth Fine Art Paper (190gsm) and Smooth Fine Art Weave (210gsm) and Smooth Fine Art Matte (310gsm). We only had test samples of first a 190gsm, 100% rag, acid free and OBS-free media, the two others are available through the Ilford Studio range as roll form.

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1st Published 01/08/2007
last update 09/12/2022 14:55:08

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