Black And White Digital Printing Part 5

The Great Paper Chase
Part Five of a Series on Fine Art Black and White Digital Printing
Revised April 2, 2008

Copyright © 2004-2008 Clayton Jones
All Rights Reserved

by Clayton Jones

News
1) This article is now divided into three sub-sections, as explained below.

2) The relative Dmax scale used in previous versions of this article has been replaced by colorimeter readings, supplied by Steve Karafyllakis. Many thanks to Steve for doing the readings. Steve uses a ColorVision SpectroColorimeter.

3) The Museo line of papers has been sold by Crane to InteliCoat Technologies, located in the state of Masachusetts, USA. Crane will continue to supply the base paper. Details can be found at this web site: www.museofineart.com

4) The popular Dourian Art paper sold by Red River, a special weight, 2-sided Photo Rag made for them by Hahnemuhle, has been discontinued.

5) The Moab papers are now owned by Legion Paper. The popular Entrada paper is still available but, alas, the Kayenta paper so well loved by Eboni BO printers has been discontinued. There may be some old stock still available. See the "Graveyard" section at this web site: www.moabpaper.com

6) I-Trak version 2, a print tracking program for fine art photographers, was launched in March.

In 2005 Epson introduced a series of photo printers that used a new Ultrachrome ink, called K3 for it's use of black and two shades of gray. Since then these printers have become enormously popular and have completely rearranged the black and white printing market.

The K3 inks produce different Dmax results on matte papers compared to the popular MIS ink sets based on Eboni black. K3 is so widely used now I felt it was worth adding a new section just for K3 test results. I also separated out the discussion on OBAs and Alpha Cellulose paper into a third section of its own.

Eboni Test Results - matte papers

K3 Test Result - matte papers

Optical Brightening Agents (OBAs) and Alpha Cellulose papers.

Get Organized! with I-Trak

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