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PermaJet Digital Negative Transfer Film - part 2 of 1 2

by Mike McNamee Published 01/10/2012

Making a Transfer Function

We followed the instructions as set out by Lambrecht on his website, first printing his tone target file. We used Photo Black ink along with maximum quality settings and Premium Glossy Photo Paper as the media choice with the relevant icc profile. A 4900 was again used.

We also ran the Pictorico media through the same process.

We remain suspicious about the shape of the Photoshop curve that resulted from the measurements and it is obvious that more work is required; our inexperience with the process shone through!

Permajet provided samples to Chris Woodhouse for testing on his Canon printer. His main concern is that the inkjet inherently creates little shadow resolution.

"There is still the overall limitation of the process, which is that inkjet process has far more highlight tonal resolution than shadow - and so in a negative process, achieving smooth highlight transitions will always be challenging."

Chris got a Dmax of 1.6 and estimates that a paper grade of at least 4 would be required for a good silver halide print.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall we seem to have ended up with a few more questions than answers in this review! However, we can say that the Permajet media performs as well as anything on the market and is an improvement on its predecessor.

The enthusiasts will no doubt take the experiments further and the media is worthy of this investment in effort. Our inclination is that the Epsons will out-perform other printers when they have the extra monochrome inks in their carriage (eg the Black, Light Black and Light-light Black), experimenting with full colour printing might squeeze a bit more quality with the extra dots (as compared with say using the ABW workflow), although the effect of this 'colour' on the grading of multigrade papers might need watching. There is also the possibility of using the Epson 'film' settings when this is available again in combination with either ABW or full colour printing. If all this sounds like a ruck of hard work remember that the value of silver halide prints and, in particular platinum prints, might make the effort worthwhile!

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1st Published 01/10/2012
last update 09/12/2022 14:57:35

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