articles/Paper/prestige-page7
by Mike McNamee Published 01/06/2013
Optimising the ABW Settings
There are five 'density' settings in the ABW, ranging from Light, through Normal to Darkest. As the graph shows, the colourimetrically perfect result is obtained somewhere between Normal and Dark settings. On the test print we used (Paul Gallagher's Mangurstadh Bay) we preferred the Darker version - the difference between an accurate print and a pleasing print. Overall the image quality was flawless.
Mike reviews the Ilford Galerie Prestige Galerie Premium.
Metamerism
We measured the colour parameters of the test swatches especially to obtain information about the metamerism. It is worth repeating for any new readers what metamerism does. It is the colour shift that occurs when the light under which a print is being viewed changes. With a heavily pigmented ink (and certainly inks from previous generations) a print that looked neutral in daylight would shift towards magenta in tungsten light. That same print could go an ugly green if viewed in fluorescent light. Shifts measuring seven points on the Lab ΔE scale used to be typical, and were certainly unpleasant. Today we anticipate values of under three points which is barely detectable to the majority of viewers. The Epson printers use a pseudo-pigment for the Photo Black which controls metamerism better than the full-pigment black used by both HP and Canon (although the latter two ink sets produce better life statistics in terms of fade resistance). We base a single metamerism measurement on that obtained from a neutral 50% density patch between D65 light and Tungsten light and expressed as the Colour Inconstancy Index (CII) on the ΔEoo scale. The metamerism of the 50% patch was 2.47 to 2.52 and the shift in tone is plotted on the graph. For practical purposes this is an excellent result even though it is higher than that obtained with some of the full-colour ink tests (1.4 to 1.6 for the gloss materials but up to 3.6 for the matt, art materials).
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