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Paper Chase - Somerset Photo Paper - part 5 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

by Mike McNamee Published

Monochrome Performance

This paper is highlighted by the manufacturers as being capable of producing 'velvety' blacks (whatever they are!). We were particularly interested in the performance making mono prints. With good metamerism values in the greys and a good, but not outstanding, Dmax, this paper will attract a following amongst the monochrome fraternity, who like matte prints. The neutrality of the greys on a profiled print was superb. Once the errors in the lightness component had been factored out, the average error along the grey scale was 0.6 LabΔE/0.8 ΔE2000, ie insignificant! The error in the lightness channel is due entirely to the inability of this matte paper to get down to a very low density; this is typical and in no way unusual. There was no evidence of density differences in the blocks of near solid black that can plague some media and the surface was relatively robust. The chalkiness we have observed in some matte papers was not evident.

Colour Performance

We made a bespoke profile using Velvet Fine Art as the media setting, 2880 as the resolution and both High Speed and Black Point Compensation turned on. As the base white is so neutral, the skin tones were rendered with tremendous colour accuracy. The average error across the Macbeth Chart was just on 3 which is a favourable result compared with the overall average of 3.3 ΔE2000. The greys were mapped to near-perfect neutral as we would expect.

The Granger Chart was very smooth with no sign of posterisation or blocking. The actual gamut volume measured at 504,000, about 7% down on the typical values we measure on the same test-bed, using other fine art materials. The loss of gamut was evenly spread across the spectrum. The differences between this material and similar competitor material was very slight, impossible to discern even with sid-by-side comparisons.

Cuthbert - from the Land of the Prince Bishops 635-687AD

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last update 09/12/2022 14:59:08

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