Paper chase - The Permajet papers

Within the paper suppliers in the UK, one range stands out as the most comprehensive in terms of the number of surfaces offered. The Permajet livery is easily recognised on the shelves of the better professional suppliers with its silver and yellow, setting off the bright sunflower.

For the Paper Chase series, the Permajet papers have provided the baseline against which we have compared all others and is "standard issue" in the Professional Imagemaker offices. The proofing paper is always used to output the magazine for final checking and almost all review printers are tested with their Portrait paper as a matter of course. If we were sent to a desert island with only eight records and one paper it would be Portrait. You will note from the last issue that it was Portrait we used to establish the difference between using Matte Black ink and Photo Black ink in the Epson Ultrachrome materials.

The Permajet range falls into two basic categories, art papers and photo papers. The photo papers consist of the glossies, lustre's and the matte papers. In general terms the art papers should be used with Matte Black Ultrachrome ink. This ink is unsuitable for the gloss and oyster finishes. Like all quality papers the Permajet range works well on almost every printer, as well as with the wide range of alternative systems, using continuous inks. To add yet further choice, Permajet also supply range of "black ink only" systems for a number of printers. In a nutshell they can provide a system to print to any concept you care to dream up, from point-ofsale to fine art.

How to decide?

With such a choice making a decision is a little daunting, it's a bit like a freshly opened box of Belgian truffles, they are all nice - depends on what you fancy!

You can get a mixed box of surfaces to try but one of the problems is that only two or three of each type is provided and you don't get to know much about how one paper behaves. My advice would be to decide between art and non-art, firstly. Then choose Oyster for non-art and Portrait for art. Get to know each of these papers and then branch out into the others from a sound knowledge base. Although they are not identical, we have found that a set of conditions for Portrait will makes a good starting point for the other art papers. Note this does not include the Matt Plus, this is a very different animal! We can write all we like, but the only way to really choose a paper is by first whittling down the surfaces by look and then extensive printmaking - and why not? You will learn a lot about your technique along the way. Despite this we have carried out exhaustive testing on the whole range so you might as well share in our findings! You can gain a closer idea of what each surface looks like by studying the image of the swatch fan.This has been corrected for colour but left a little dark so that the glancing light emphasises the surface texture. It is about the best that can be done photographically, you really need to handle paper samples and make images to glean a true idea.

Basic Characteristics

Do not seek a winner from these tests, the real victor is a surface you prefer most. If it is absolute colour fidelity you are seeking, the gloss and oyster finishes stand out well above any of the art materials. However if you are seeking an artistic feel your work and you can up-sell it, then the extra care required in handling the more delicate art surfaces may be worthwhile. In terms of weight, all requirements are provided for, from the lighter Matt Proofing to 1.2mm thick board. Most of the art papers comply with the weight requirements of the Fine Art Trade Guild of 250gsm minimum.

The descriptive tone colour is tabled with the other properties. It is quite hard to define this parameter and we resorted to plotting the tones from the spectrophotometer. This grouped the base tones into the creams at one end of the warmth scale , through the neutral point to the cool, artificially brightened blues of the microporous gloss and lustre finishes. The optical brightening activity of each sample varied according to its base fibre mix and coating.The Gloss,Oyster and Matt Plus are heavily brightened and show a lift of about 10% at the 400nm wavelength as well as high fluorescence in the uv booth. The other papers lie between this extreme and the optically dead Alpha and Artist Classic papers. Examining the backs of the media suggests that some of the base mix consists of reconstituted fibre, a common practice to save high value cotton rag substrate. Parchment stands out from the crowd in that the reflectance lift is quite low but the OBA activity seems higher. This may also point to the general sparkle of prints made on this surface, which has a great following. These deliberations are really only for those who are fanatical about their substrate purity, most ordinary mortals can just get on with it, there are no poor papers in the art group.

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The DigitalPhoto Series

This consists of Gloss 271,Oyster 271,Matt Plus 240, Double Sided Lustre 285 and Matt Proofing 160.The Gloss,Oyster and Double Sided Lustre are all microporous coating technology producing instant drying and compatibility with pigment ink sets. In terms of colour fidelity that the media is capable of holding, when profiled (with an Epson Ultrachrome ink set) the Oyster came out marginally on top, with the Gloss and DS Lustre quite close behind. Both the Matt Plus and the Proofing Paper are statistical outliers from the general data population (including the art papers) with significantly higher average errors. It is a combination of the reduction in gamut volume and the lack of deepest black density, which drags their performance down but good looking, neutral prints were made in spite of the lesser statistics. However, the Matt Proofing should be regarded for what it is, an inexpensive, light media for test prints and proofing. Keep that in mind and you will not go far wrong with it, we use it exclusively for proofing Professional Imagemaker.

One of the areas in which the average error is improved is in the high saturation blues. These are normally the high errors in an Ultrachrome ink set and are significantly reduced in the Gloss, Oyster and Lustre data sets. Metamerism is low in the Gloss and Oyster surfaces, a little higher in the DS Lustre. In both the Matt Plus and Matt Proofing papers the metamerism is extremely low making the Matt Plus a particularly good candidate for monochrome work

The ImageLife Series

These are all 100% British made papers, manufactured from 100% Cotton Rag, buffered with calcium carbonate for added stability in atmospheric pollutants. The Delta Matt Fibre is 271gsm media, which is extremely smooth and brilliant white. No optical brighteners are used in the coating for extra stability. Overall the Delta is marginally ahead of its companions in this group with slightly better gamut volume, metamerism, maximum black and colour fidelity. This is another paper, which has all the required credentials for a monochrome specialist.

The Alpha and Omega are slightly cream (i.e. natural) in colour, returning good skin tone error values. They are particularly suitable for fine art reproduction.

The Classic FineArt Series

This is the best known of the Permajet range consisting of 9 Fine Art Materials and a number of different surface textures. Every taste is catered for and you should not have to look outside the range to find something you like. The gamut volumes of the Classic range are in general higher than those of the ImageLife range although this difference is probably not detectable. The colour errors are on a par with the ImageLife materials.

The response of the papers to ink is actually quite similar and to confirm the point we tried printing each paper with the same profile built specifically for Portrait Classic.The result was inferior in almost every case and the average for the group was raised from 3.63 for bespoke to 3.83 for all papers using a profile for Portrait. This is quite an important implication in that it suggests that, for all but the most critical work, a profile or set of printing conditions that suited Portrait would work quite well on most of the other art materials in the Classic and Image Life range. The one exception is Matt Plus. For this material, the OBA content demands its own profile.

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COLOUR ERRORS ACROSS THE GAMUT

Given that the errors in colour are quite small and the largest difference was between the resin coated media and the matt art media we calculated the errors across the whole colour gamut for both classes. Above, the errors are split down into the perceived error in hue, saturation and lightness for both RC media and art media .The data are arranged from the "reds" on the left around the colour wheel to the magentas on the right. Note that the errors peak in the blues and purples. The art papers have higher errors in most parts of the gamut, other than the all-important skin tones, where they are lower (see below, note everything is very slightly less saturated and mapped slightly closer to the cream of the papers). It is also significant that errors in hue in the blue parts of the spectrum are the most difficult for the eye to detect. Any assessment based on visual judgement would flatten out the top of the histogram a little further. As might be expected, a good chunk of the error reduction for the RC papers is in the lightness channel. The deeper maximum black provides more space for the profile to map the tones and this effect shuffles all the way through the gamut.

None of the data in any part of chart would give rise for concern or be a problem for real prints and images. High quality papers deliver high quality colours when used correctly! Permajet

Other variations
There are almost limitless variations that could be tried
using our printer sets as they consisted of:
3x Epson 7600,
2x Epson 2100,
2x Epson 4000
Ultrachrome Matte Black ink
Ultrachrome Photo Black ink
Permajet FS Colour Ink
19 Papers
This alone gives 399 variations which if also factored for the
ink media settings leaps to almost 15,000.

Presented with this dilemma we tested Portrait and Omega with Permajet FS Colour on Permajet’s Epson 7600 machine. The FS ink appears to deliver a maximum about 2% deeper and a gamut volume 2 or 3% less than Ultrachrome. There was no significant difference in the metamerism. The flesh tones with this ink set were more saturated which gave a higher overall accuracy to the colour fidelity. The dot structure of this combination was slightly more grainy than the Ultrachrome sets.

The Boards

New to the Permajet stable are a number of 1.2mm thick board materials with the same high quality surface finishes that their names imply. This saves the photographer the trouble of mounting their work on a stable thicker substrate removing the danger of damaging the print during mounting and handling. It also prevents the contamination problems that can occur if museum grade board and adhesives are not used in conventional mounting procedures (in any case hot mounting techniques should not be employed on art quality ink jet output). The boards are compatible with the Epson 2100 (feed from the back) and the Epson 4000 (feed from the back or the front), 7600 and 9600 printers (feed from the top). The surfaces have to be pressed together during the "conversion" process to board and there is a slight reduction in the surface texture of the Artist Classic. Epson 4000, 7600 and 9600 users should note that the thickness of the media can be dialled in so that the altitude of the ink heads is raised away from the surface (consult your manuals!). If you choose say Textured Fine Art as your media setting the altitude will be set at 0.7mm compared to the 1.3mm required. Whilst the automatic detector should take care of this we have occasionally got better results setting it manually. We also had to experiment with the feed speed to reduce banding across the direction of the head movement on some of the boards and thicker papers. These variations are not flaws as much as part and parcel of achieving the ultimate quality that the printers and media are capable of.

CONCLUSIONS

As we said at the start, you can take your pick of these papers, assured that they will do the business. After bespoke profiling the data divide into two camps, the higher accuracy of the RC coated glosses and lustre's and the matte & art surfaces. We average around 3.3 for colour error over the entire range of printers and materials we test, never getting below 2.5 units. The variations between printers, paper batches, ink batches and other uncontrolled variables seem to swallow any inherent differences between individual media, with all data below 4.0 apart from the Matt Plus and Matt Proofing. In the mixed-up world in which we live the Matt Plus delivers the lowest metamerism. Here are our favourites and the brief reason why:

General Photographic Oyster 271 Most Accurate, good black, tougher finish

General Art

Portrait Classic Smooth, good detail, natural cream, good black, always performs well and consistently. It contains a small amount of brightener.

Monochrome Delta or Matt Plus Good black depth and low metamerism. Delta would be a good choice for fine art monochrome as it has no brighteners.

Heavy textured art Parchment Classic Prints have a little extra sparkle, very heavy base, with a highly characteristic torchon texture.

Reproduction of original watercolours Artists Classic So like the original it is uncanny!

You are entitled to disagree but don't pore over the data too long, get hold of some of the papers and try them out yourself on real images!

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The SWPP 2008 Convention was an outstanding success,
we have 130 days to get ready for the 2009 convention - which starts on January 14, 2009

Photo Quote: A positive attitude can really make dreams come true - it did for me. - David Bailey