articles/Paper/permajetultrapearl-page2
by Mike McNamee Published 01/02/2010
The overall trend of the Lab plot shows the effect of the profile mapping to the coolness of the base paper, all the colours are heading south, other than the blue! This is a normal result for a cool, bright paper.
Monochrome Testing
This type of surface finish can play well with the monochrome enthusiast and for that reason we spent a little more time on this aspect than we can usually afford. We ran a full tonal analysis on the Epson Advanced Black and White (ABW) drivers.
Our deliberations suggest that a setting somewhere between Lighter and Normal allows the 50% input luminance to give 50% output luminance. The other options rather over-darkened the image and by the time we got to 'Darkest' we were a full 10% darker than the aim value. Using the ABW driver made little difference to the CII but the Dmax was raised to an impressive 2.37 - very high for a 'lustre'. Such values excite the monochrome enthusiasts; they do add depth to a print!
The base tone using ABW 'neutral' started at the base white (nominally at 2; -6) then climbed to a more neutral value as more of the truly neutral ink was set down. We made an identical print pair using 'ABW; neutral; light' and then a full-colour image using our bespoke profile. The ABW print was slightly lighter to the eye and slightly green in the mid-tones, a result confirmed by measurement. We attempted to refine the ABW shot using ABW normal (to make it darker) and settings of 10 Horizontal; 5 Vertical (to counteract the green bias). This delivered a pleasing, but very slightly warm-toned print suggesting that something like 7H; 3V would create a neutral effect. This is a personal judgement and shows off the sophistication of control available in the ABW - it allows a refined tweak of even the most brightened papers! We also noted that the prints were a rather ugly green cast under low-energy fluorescent bulbs (see the feature in this issue), this is not a comment on the paper or ink!
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