Whats up with HP Professional matte Canvas?

[macguiver]

Been using HP Professional Matte Canvas with great results since buying my printer 4 years ago. Recently the price and code (E4J61B VS the older Q8674A) for HP Professional Matte canvas has changed. (Its much cheaper than before and I was pretty happy about that)
I bought some but I'm having a hell of a time coming close to matching what I was getting from the rolls I had with the older sku number. Anyone experiencing this as well? Anyone have a workflow fix for this? Is there a new color profile for this or does it use the same profile as before?

Printing the identical file to the newer Pro Matte Canvas with the settings that gave me consistant results before is giving me a dull, flat image. Tried calibrating the profile with the new canvas but its still lifeless. Tried tweeking the image in PS but its still way off from the Older stuff. Have two more rolls of this stuff and I'm not sure what to do.

Any input or experience with this would be appreciated.

Thanks
Paul

[Ernst Dinkla]

http://www.brandmanagementgroup.com/

I think the above url tells more about the changes in HP media like the Matte Litho-Realistic and your medium. The above company probably has more to say about the products than just their distribution. At the Photokina 2012, 30 months ago, it shared the booth of Innovaart and it had several rebranded Innova products in their "Kodak" catalog.
There are more links to find between Innova and BMG.  Since then HP inkjet media have been added to their distribution channels and reports appear here about media changes and article number changes.

I have used HP Prof. Matte Canvas but not recently. Good quality but not cheap. The site above says that this canvas quality and other canvas qualities are discontinued. Two canvas qualities branded as HP are now distributed, two canvas qualities branded as Kodak, could be the same. I hardly print on canvas these days so can not advise you but it might be better to add other manufacturers in your search for a good quality canvas.

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
December 2014 update, 700+ inkjet media white spectral plots

[macguiver]

Hello Ernst,

Thank you so much for this information. That site gives me a new place to start out. The HP Professional Matte Canvas isn't the same as the old from what they say there. It would stand to reason that the iCC profile would change as well. I see they also have new ICC profiles there so I will try change profiles on the printer and in my workflow to see if that helps.

Thanks
Paul

[macguiver]

I think I finally got this worked out.

My initial mistake was using my old Pro Matte Canvas profile since this is really a totally new canvas with the same name. I had reinstalled the downloaded profile from HP initially as well but that didn't help. I had tried updating that profile but that didn't help. Today I created a totally new profile using my Z3200 profiling system and everything looks good again. A roll of crappy prints later I think I finally got it right. Glad this canvas is half the price of the old HP Pro Matte Canvas. An expensive lesson just the same.