Peter Figen
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 p.1 #15 · So what's your favorite paper? | |
The paper I use the most of is VFA for Epson. It's the least expensive of the fine art papers and is actually very nice overall. I've been printing a fair amount of hotel jobs this year where they want both rock bottom price and a fine art looking paper and this is the only way to go for that.
I also get a fair amount of requests for Luster paper but absolutely hate the Epson Premium Luster. Not only is it too thin for really large prints, it's too "lustery" for my tastes, and worst of all, it has this sort of grayed down bluish base color that is just plain weird. Other than that I love it.
I just got cold called from Lexjet and they sent me their version of Luster. Interestingly enough, it has a cleaner non bluish white which measures just slightly brighter and it profiles almost identically to the Epson. You could for all intents and purposes interchange the profiles and never know. However, the Lexjet sales rep swore up and down that this was a 300 gram paper as opposed to Epson's 260 gram luster, and upon measuring it with a micrometer, the Epson Luster mic'd out at .279 mm while the Lexjet was actually thinner at .269mm. I've emailed the rep with no response so far.
Other than those I love Hahnemühle FAP and Photo Rag and like Crane Museo Silver Rag for black and white but not for color.
For those using older printers, and this includes the equivalent of the 9800 and earlier of Epson, I found that the Hahn FAP actually prints better color images with noticeably blacker blacks when using matte ink. On my 9800, the "L" value for a max black dropped from a fairly anemic 13-14 down to about 9-10 using the matte ink. The caveats are that you must use a custom profile, Advanced Black and White will NOT give neutral prints, and you need to spray your prints for black gloss differential. The same paper on my 9900 with PK ink gives a black "L" value of around 8, which is darker than anything I could get from the 9800.
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