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Paper Chase - Fotospeed Natural Soft Textured Bright White - part 2 of 1 2 3

by Mike McNamee Published 01/06/2012

The papers transported quite well through the 4900, using the front, manual, board slot. The Natural Textured paper was not as flat as its companions and with the grain aligned down the long direction the curling caused some head striking, just at the edges of the print. This might benefit from a change in the platten gap. It is a characteristic of papers from this mill that the grain direction can vary, giving rise to curling.

Colour Testing

We followed our usual protocol of making a bespoke profile using 1i Publish and a scrambled 727-patch set. This profile was then used to calculate the colour gamut and to make the colour audit targets. An Epson 4900 was employed using matt black ink and settings of Velvet Fine Art Paper and 'Quality' (1440dpi).

The data are tabulated. Overall they are good for this class of paper, the soft natural finish delivers a slightly lighter print, between 1 and 2% on average. The skin tones are excellent on the un-brightened media, the main error component being a lack of saturation. The base tone slightly compromises the skin tones with the brightened papers, a normal result, the hue error rises slightly. The HiGAM colour patch set behave as expected, the errors are twice those of the entire range, with a loss of saturation dominating the errors. The Granger Charts and grey ramps were smooth, the black detail was held down to between 20 and 25 RGB points, the highlights up to 250 RGB points.

Metamerism, measured as ΔE00 (CII D65 to Tungsten A on a 50% grey) was between 3.5 and 4, which is slightly high. The Dmax for the full colour print was 1.6 on the NT and NST, but fell to 1.54 on the brightened papers. The gamut volumes were typical of soft matt, art papers at around 616,000 on average, less than the Epson Signature Worthy papers which were typically 680,000 - again this is probably the softness of the surface.

The Verdict

These are an interesting set of papers with slightly unusual properties which lend them well to the reproduction of art or of softer toned images that do not demand too much fine detail. The two brightened papers hold pole position in terms of their brightness and so if it is bright sparkly prints that you are seeking along with a soft art feel then you need look no further, they will fit the bill nicely!

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1st Published 01/06/2012
last update 09/12/2022 14:54:23

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