The exhibition prints I produce are on a variety of quite expensive archival papers and often in limited editions, where I'm selling to a market that wants that little bit extra in their prints.

However I also produce many of my images in a more economic form that are used by interior designers for decorative art in commercial premisses (hotels, foyers, offices etc).

Note - this paper is now known as Pinnacle Lustre

This short review is about a 300gsm lustre finish paper, offered through a local supplier, Paper Spectrum in the UK

I've some notes on finding a local equivalent, if you're not in the UK, at the end of the review.

I was looking for a good quality paper, available in a variety of sizes, that would be good for colour images and black and white.

I use Epson enhanced matte for a lot of B/W prints. It's got a good finish and works very well with a lot of my images.

It's good for certain colour images too, but its limited gamut is restrictive.

Some assorted prints drying on the top of the piano...

test prints on my piano

If you've read some of my recent reviews you'll know I've looked at some fine papers with excellent finishes.

What was available for more economic printing? I often produce such images to custom sizes, so roll paper was an important option.

The papers were tested with three Epson printers here at Northlight Images, the 4880, 7880 and 2400.

About the paper

The paper is described as:

"A Heavyweight instant dry gloss paper with a special high quality ink receiver layer and double sided polyethlene coating giving photo realistic look and feel.

Resistant to cockling with good dimensional stability.

Brilliant white shade.

Ozone and UV absorbers offer protection from airborne and light deterioration, leading to excellent archival qualities."

I used the paper with Photo black (Pk) ink in all the printers.

It's currently available in 6"x4", 7"x5", A4, A3 and A3+ cut sheets and 25mtr rolls at 17" and 24".

For those of you with darkroom experience it feels like a fairly heavy RC paper.

Paper Specifications
Thickness	287 ± 5
Weight	g/m2 300 ± 7
PE-weight VS	g/m2 17 ± 2
PE-weight RS	g/m2 26 ± 2
Curl 23°, 50%RH	mm 0 ± 8
Gloss (Dr.Lange) 60°	% 15 ± 5
Colour Hunter UVI	L= 93.7 ± 0.5 a= 0.3 ± 0.5 b= -7.6 ± 0.8 -this blueness indicates the OBAs
CIE Whiteness D65	110
Brightness D65	95

It's obvious from the paper colour that there is quite a bit of Optical Brightening Agent (OBA) in the paper.

It's important to remember that OBAs are not automatically a bad thing, it's what gives the paper its brilliant whiteness. The OBAs can fade over time leading to a (slight) yellowing. However mounting the prints behind glass and out of direct sunlight usually means it takes quite a long while before any visible deterioration, particularly with pigment inks, such as I use.

Using icc profiles

The suggested print setting (on Epson printers) is to use Premium Lustre or Premium Lustre (260) in some driver settings.

I tried a number of different settings (see the test print on the far right below) but found that although some other settings gave a more even print, the suggested ones gave the best shadow performance.

If you're curious I have an article on choosing media settings and some media test images.

lustre finish of prints

For black and white printing, the usual issues with 3rd party papers and the Epson ABW print mode is that you tend to get slight non-linearity in the greyscale response. this can be corrected with a QTR icc profile. I'll not go over the mechanisms for creating one here, since I've several articles describing the process with different measuring instruments.

B/W with the PrintFIX (now Spyder3Print)

B/W with the ColorMunki

Choosing the Luster(260) setting and 'neutral' for the print, the shadows were fairly accurate, so much so that for the 4880 and 7880 I'd probably not bother with a linerarising profile. It's still worth checking though, if you are using a different printer.

pacific sunset in Oregon I created some profiles for the paper (2400, 4880 and 7880) using a 1728 patch A3 sized target, and the results were quite impressive.

Print Quality

I've shown the prints on the glossy top of my piano above (a Kawai KG-1 fyi ;-), to give better feel for the 'look' of the paper.

You can see that with pigment inks there is a slight gloss differential, although I took some care in lining up the shot above to maximise its visibility.

It's a very bright paper, which may not suit all tastes or images, but where appropriate, it does help give good depth to prints.

I do quite a few commercial decorative prints like the one to the right, that need bright vibrant colours, and I found this paper a useful option.

The paper was flat from the box and even after a couple of weeks laying round my office, the test prints showed no real curl.

The paper dries very rapidly and the surface was quite resistant to scuffing, certainly more so than some of the heavy fibre type papers I've looked at recently.

It's a paper that has the quality I need for my commercial print work.

Good profiles show the range of colours that modern ink sets can achieve very well on a print surface such as this.

Summary

A lustre finish photo paper that at 300gsm has a nice solid feel to it, and is capable of very fine results.

Available from Paper Spectrum in the UK (who will supply samples).

If you are outside of the UK, I'd say the most similar paper I've used would be the Canon 300 gsm 'Glacier' finish paper.

A spot of research with Google should be able to find various equivalents, just remember that there are only so many paper mills and so many specialist coating companies in the world - or email me ;-)

A personal health warning about paper reviews ;-)

One of my pet hates is when I see comparative reviews of papers in some magazines that include a stack of spurious tables and diagrams covering various measurements about printer/paper/ink performance. Most are utterly meaningless (without -detailed- explanations of the theory and practice behind them). The most egregious nonsense is posting gamut volume numbers to six figure accuracy... Assume that the graphs are there to bulk out the article or make the reviewer look clever ;-)

Similarly I just couldn't be bothered to measure the D-max of many papers (how black is black) - there is so much more to what makes a fine print than some spurious measurement accuracy. Note that I don't apply this when I'm making profiles, that's one time I am bothered about lots of measurements and their accuracy and their consistency.

I have a few colour images that I'll print on a heavy matt rag paper on my old Epson 9600. It really has a somewhat restricted gamut due to the ink limits and original Ultrachrome Inks I use. The images just work on that paper. Gamut and D-max are just two aspects of deciding how you want your prints to look.

Print choices are a personal thing - if you just choose papers by numbers then your prints will (IMHO) lack something.

Other related info

All our paper reviews.

Black and white test image - a very harsh (but fair) test.

Colour management links on this site.

Media settings and profiling for third party inks
Keith recently converted an Epson Stylus COLOR 1160 to third party inks. In describing the profiling of a this set-up with a third party glossy paper, he shows how that often neglected aspect of profiling -driver media settings- can make all the difference between a so-so print and one that he would be happy to send out as a sample to his commercial clients.

The PrintFIX PRO review - good profiling package with black and white options.

Printer profiling with the Eye One Photo - review.

Why don't my prints match my screen?
A short article showing why there is more to getting your prints to match your screen, than just calibrating your monitor. It's the vital first step, but you do need to consider some other factors for best results.

Reviews on this site.