articles/Paper/permatjetpapers-page6
by Mike McNamee Published 01/02/2005
Other variations
There are almost limitless variations that could be tried using our printer sets as they consisted of:
3x Epson 7600,
2x Epson 2100,
2x Epson 4000
Ultrachrome Matte Black ink
Ultrachrome Photo Black ink
Permajet FS Colour Ink
19 Papers
This alone gives 399 variations which if also factored for the ink media settings leaps to almost 15,000.
Presented with this dilemma we tested Portrait and Omega with Permajet FS Colour on Permajet's Epson 7600 machine. The FS ink appears to deliver a maximum about 2% deeper and a gamut volume 2 or 3% less than Ultrachrome. There was no significant difference in the metamerism. The flesh tones with this ink set were more saturated which gave a higher overall accuracy to the colour fidelity. The dot structure of this combination was slightly more grainy than the Ultrachrome sets.
The Boards
New to the Permajet stable are a number of 1.2mm thick board materials with the same high quality surface finishes that their names imply. This saves the photographer the trouble of mounting their work on a stable thicker substrate removing the danger of damaging the print during mounting and handling. It also prevents the contamination problems that can occur if museum grade board and adhesives are not used in conventional mounting procedures (in any case hot mounting techniques should not be employed on art quality ink jet output). The boards are compatible with the Epson 2100 (feed from the back) and the Epson 4000 (feed from the back or the front), 7600 and 9600 printers (feed from the top). The surfaces have to be pressed together during the "conversion" process to board and there is a slight reduction in the surface texture of the Artist Classic. Epson 4000, 7600 and 9600 users should note that the thickness of the media can be dialled in so that the altitude of the ink heads is raised away from the surface (consult your manuals!). If you choose say Textured Fine Art as your media setting the altitude will be set at 0.7mm compared to the 1.3mm required. Whilst the automatic detector should take care of this we have occasionally got better results setting it manually. We also had to experiment with the feed speed to reduce banding across the direction of the head movement on some of the boards and thicker papers. These variations are not flaws as much as part and parcel of achieving the ultimate quality that the printers and media are capable of.
CONCLUSIONS
As we said at the start, you can take your pick of these papers, assured that they will do the business. After bespoke profiling the data divide into two camps, the higher accuracy of the RC coated glosses and lustre's and the matte & art surfaces. We average around 3.3 for colour error over the entire range of printers and materials we test, never getting below 2.5 units. The variations between printers, paper batches, ink batches and other uncontrolled variables seem to swallow any inherent differences between individual media, with all data below 4.0 apart from the Matt Plus and Matt Proofing. In the mixed-up world in which we live the Matt Plus delivers the lowest metamerism. Here are our favourites and the brief reason why:
General Photographic Oyster 271 Most Accurate, good black, tougher finish
General Art
Portrait Classic Smooth, good detail, natural cream, good black, always performs well and consistently. It contains a small amount of brightener.
Monochrome Delta or Matt Plus Good black depth and low metamerism. Delta would be a good choice for fine art monochrome as it has no brighteners.
Heavy textured art Parchment Classic Prints have a little extra sparkle, very heavy base, with a highly characteristic torchon texture.
Reproduction of original watercolours Artists Classic So like the original it is uncanny!
You are entitled to disagree but don't pore over the data too long, get hold of some of the papers and try them out yourself on real images!
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