articles/Paper/thewholerange-page4
by Mike McNamee Published 01/04/2010
The graph of all the media divides roughly into categories:1.4 to 1.5 Canvas
1.6 to 1.7 Art and matt surfaces
2.0 to 2.2 Gloss, lustre and gloss barytas
Occupying mid positions in the list are Smooth Art Silk at
1.55 and Photo Art Pearl at 1.85.
Gamut Volume
Gamut volume is allied to Dmax because as density increases the number of available colours increases, especially in the darker part of the gamut. However, they are totally linked and the graph plot shows a couple of outliers that are highlighted in which gamut volume is unexpectedly higher or lower (Photo Art Pearl, Photo Semi-Gloss Canvasand Fine Art Super Gloss Canvas).
In general the larger the gamut volume the brighter and more saturated the print you can make and so higher values are desirable. The overall groups split roughly as follows:
400,000 to 500,000 Matt Canvas
500,000 to 600,000 Fine Art Papers
800,000 to 900,000 The barytas, glosses and lustres
Surface Texture
There is no measure normally applied for measuring the 'tooth' of a paper. In engineering it is possible to make such measurements but it would involve taking a casting of the surface. Artists normally just look and feel a paper and decide on that basis. The surface texture results from the final processing of the paper. If it is rolled through smooth rollers it creates a smooth or even a polished surface.
If it is not rolled, but taken directly from the mould machine the paper bears a reflection of the felt surface of the mould.Sometimes the felt of the mould drum is interwoven with wires to produce a 'chainlaid' paper which bears the marks of the wires as a regular structure to the surface. The nearest representation we can get is to photograph the paper with a glancing-angle light source and show you the pictures - nothing beats looking at a swatch book or a sample pack of papers.
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