articles/Paper/fourbaryt-page9
by Mike McNamee Published 01/06/2010
Real prints
As with other tests, we made some real prints to get a better feel of the media in use. A number of fullcolour and monochrome A3+ prints were made and quite frankly it became a little tedious operating with a dwell time of 20 units (ie 2 seconds per pass). It might be OK for occasional prints but if printing is part of your business and you are using a lot of paper then you should look at abandoning the dwell adjustment or drastically reducing it (it is not likely to be required with the suction systems of the large-format printers). We saw no evidence of prints not drying correctly even when we did a consecutive six passes making the monochrome ring-around (although in the latter case we saw the print just starting to cockle a little under the influence of the wet ink. Both the flatter, Canson and Platinum Lustre showed slight signs of distortion when wet under heavy ink loads. You should take care to ensure that the prints are dry before handling them or framing them.
As a final check on the monochrome responses of the papers we printed a set of Paul Gallagher's Mangurstadh Bay (from his latest book, see book reviews in this issue). We printed using the ABW driver with the appropriate tone colour setting, that is: 'Warm' for Platinum Gloss WT, 'Cool' for Platinum Gloss and neutral for both the Canson and Platinum Lustre. As with choosing papers on base colour, the potential purchaser is left with a dilemma. We rated all the papers as outstanding!
The Platinum Gloss WT stands out because it is a genuinely warm-toned finish and if that is what you are after, the choice is self-evident. It creates handsome landscapes and monochrome portraits that will stand with the best. If you like the clinical coolness of Platinum Gloss then it provides this with the 'Cool' setting but also provides a neutral print with the 'Neutral' setting. The Canson and Platinum Lustre are both in between these two. The Lustre has the finer surface texture of the two and the Canson has the advantage of the chic French name, no OBA and real baryta. The choice is yours, none will disappoint!
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