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Author Topic: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look  (Read 19262 times)

rasworth

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This thread is an offshoot of a previous thread discussing matte papers in general.

I emailed RR and requested a sample of their new Palo Duro Etching paper, received two sheets a couple days later.  I decided with two sheets the best quantitative evaluation I could do was create profiles on my Epson 3880.  I had previously downloaded the RR profile, was quite surprised after checking it in ColorThink to find it listed a black point of L*a*b* = 2.34,.37,.22, and a total gamut of 774,930.  These would be very good numbers for any pk based paper, and fantastic for mk papers.

My 3880 was in Photo Black mode, so I first did a 405 patch (one sheet) profile, using i1Profiler and an i1Pro (non-uv), thinking if the paper were that good with mk black it should come out ok with pk.  Wrong, the 0-0-0 patch measured L*a*b*=23.30,.47,2.03.  Otherwise the profile appeared proper, smooth gamut volume and fairly congruent neutral rendering curves.  The gamut volume read out as 483,902, much smaller than RR's profile.

Back to the printer, switch to mk ink, print out another target.  I used Velvet Fine Art as the selected media, per the RR profile instructions, and Quality = 5.  The results were better, L*a*b* = 18.24,.90,1.72, and gamut volume 497,603.  However, my results were a long way from the RR profile numbers.  Again, my profile checked out wrt to other parameters, and looks good doing soft-proof in Photoshop CC, although the high black level detracts.

I'm out of the paper, can't do anything else at this point.  I plan to contact Red River support tomorrow and relay my findings.  It's possible they sent me the wrong paper, they don't have pre-packaged sample packs yet, so it's too early to criticize.  The RR profile copyright indicated Chromix, ICC version 2.2.0.  I also created version 2 profiles.  I have cranked out several profiles recently, all for pk papers for myself and others, with good results, so I don't think my process is flawed.

I hope there are others doing similar testing, and that they will contribute shortly.

Richard Southworth
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #1 on: June 02, 2017, 07:34:21 am »

Richard, I'm not sure why you printed using PK inks as RR says to use MK with Velvet Fine Art setting.  No surprise that your results were worse than the recommended settings.

I ordered a box of letter size sheets and it's in transit.  According to the tracking, it should be here today.  I'm going to prepare a standard profile using my normal patch set with ArgylCMS.  I'll compare that to the William Turner profile that I've been using for several years and also report back on the black point measurement.  I will also print out the Outback test photo image and see what that looks like.

I should have a report early next week.

Alan
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rasworth

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #2 on: June 02, 2017, 09:56:21 am »

Alan,

My printer was initially in photo black mode, so I started with pk ink, using Premium Semigloss as the media.  As I reported, the results were bad, and I switched my 3880 to mk ink, chose Velvet Fine Art (per the RR instructions) and printed a second target.  The mk profile, which should be directly comparable to the RR profile, indicated a black level of L* = 18.

So yes, I am fully aware that mk ink is the proper choice.  I only created a pk ink profile because it was convenient to start in that mode, and I had some reason to believe it might result in a decent black point, given the RR profile parameters.

Again, as reported in my first post, I ended up creating a mk ink based profile, to be apples and apples with the RR profile.

Richard Southworth
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #3 on: June 02, 2017, 10:35:37 am »

Richard,

I just checked my data for William Turner and L* is 18 so it would not be surprising if the RR paper were the same.
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rasworth

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #4 on: June 02, 2017, 12:37:09 pm »

Alan,

It would not be surprising, except that RR has made a big deal out the paper's dense blacks, describing a barrier layer between the ink receptive coating and the substrate that is supposed to keep more of the black ink near the surface.  And of course there is the matter of their canned profile and its L*=2.34.

Richard Southworth
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #5 on: June 02, 2017, 01:06:35 pm »

Alan,

It would not be surprising, except that RR has made a big deal out the paper's dense blacks, describing a barrier layer between the ink receptive coating and the substrate that is supposed to keep more of the black ink near the surface.  And of course there is the matter of their canned profile and its L*=2.34.

Richard Southworth
We'll see what my measurement shows.  I can tell you that both Ilford Gold Fibre Silk and Museo Silver Rag, the two PK papers that I regularly print on have L* = 5.  This data as the William Turner data comes from the 0,0,0 patch in the Argyll patch set.
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rasworth

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #6 on: June 02, 2017, 01:35:03 pm »

My data is also from the 0-0-0 patch, and my custom profile for Ilford Gold Silk shows L*=4.4, i.e. same as yours.  Look forward to seeing your measurements on the RR Palo Duro Etching paper.  I have an email into the RR support group asking for clarification.  Their profile does not include the data set, so using the black point tag for comparison.

Richard Southworth
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MHMG

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #7 on: June 02, 2017, 04:30:47 pm »

Alan,

It would not be surprising, except that RR has made a big deal out the paper's dense blacks, describing a barrier layer between the ink receptive coating and the substrate that is supposed to keep more of the black ink near the surface.  And of course there is the matter of their canned profile and its L*=2.34.

Richard Southworth

No fine art matte paper is going to get anywhere close to L*= 2.34.  It would defy the laws of physics for matte surface scattering. A semimatte RC photo paper like Epson Proofing paper white semimatte can reach L*=5 or or 6 with well matched inkset, but RC media does so because the PE layer is a good smoothing sublayer and is an ultimate barrier layer to further ink penetration. 

L*=18 is very typical for matte papers and good ink/media combinations. L*=16 occurs sometimes using the right papers (e.g. Canson rag photographique) in Epson ABW B&W printing mode and on Canon and HP printers as well with the right choices of paper.  L*=14 is best L*min I have ever measured from an inkjet printer printing with a highly tuned monochrome ink set using Roy Harrington's Quadtone RIP as the driver in combination with a specific matte fine art paper.

A profile editing package can, however, be used to edit the LUTS in the profile, thus creating a softproof that looks better, but the LAB numbers will no longer match between the forward and inverse transforms. The inverse transform has been "cooked" to give a better softproofing experience, and photoshop's info tool will display the edited numbers.  That's what may be going on with the aforesaid L*min=2.34 canned profile for this new paper.

Lastly, Epson made significant claims for improved Dmax with its newest ink HD ink set, and worked with it's media suppliers on its newer Legacy Paper line to ensure that result. This is where some of that "new" enhanced coating technology came about, IMHO, and RR's new etching paper may indeed have tapped into this new refined coating technology from the same source where Epson gets it, if Epson doesn't have exclusivity to the latest tech. It does give improved performance with some media/ink combinations, but not all.  It's very ink/media dependent. Use other high quality third party papers with the new HD ink set, for example, and I've actually encountered results that were slightly worse compared to the older K3 ink set.  HP and Canon OEM pigmented inks also have some "up and down" performance which is media dependent, but on average, HP's combined used of both PK and MK inks in it's Z series printer driver when printing on  matte fine art media still yields best-in-class results on a broader range of matte media, IMHO, beaten only by specialty B&W monochrome ink sets that have been carefully tuned to the media.

cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com

Edit: Addenda to comments above. I just visited the RR website, and RR has published LAB values for a few different OEM inks on this media, all of which have very low L*min values, and all of which are claimed to be measured directly with a spectrophotometer. I'd wager good money the spectrophotometer that was used is out of calibration. An aged bulb in some spectrophotometers will generate increasingly erroneous readings for L* value as L* min values are approached yet the instrument will appear to be working properly. The subsequent illumination deficiency errors get spread evenly over the whole L* range of the measurment target such that an ICC profile made from these systematic errors will still appear to work satisfactorily in the forward conversion to print. Nonetheless, the measured values are wrong!

« Last Edit: June 02, 2017, 05:39:19 pm by MHMG »
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rasworth

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #8 on: June 02, 2017, 05:38:23 pm »

I think they profiled the wrong paper, per my inspection of the profile (see attached screen print).  I have a support ticket with Red River, we'll see how they respond.

Richard Southworth
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johncustodio

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #9 on: June 02, 2017, 09:35:53 pm »

Epson Hot Press Natural paper, Epson 3880 printer, QTR, Piezography K7 with Jon Cone's new Ultra HD matte black ink, Dmax= 1.8, L*= 13.
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #10 on: June 03, 2017, 08:55:08 am »

My box of paper arrived yesterday but then I found I was out of Vivid Light Magenta and that was the one color that I didn't have a replacement for! >:(  I immediately placed an order with Atlex but the cartridge won't be arriving until mid-week so my tests will have to wait.  I like Mark's thought about an spectro that has gone bad.  This makes the most sense to me. 
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rasworth

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #11 on: June 03, 2017, 10:32:51 am »

At least Red River appears to be consistent.  I downloaded three more matte profiles, two for my Epson 3880 and one for a Canon - all three indicate a black point of L*=3.  I used one of their profiles in Photoshop to soft proof the Outback test image, colors look ok but of course the shadows are much blacker than using one of my RR custom profiles.

I presume one could print with their profile, obtain reasonable results, and never know that the soft proof was a hoax, at least wrt black levels.  Maybe Mark's earlier theory about deliberately editing the profiles to improve the soft proof is correct.  It's been a few years, but I remember using Profilemaker Editor to mess around with such.

Richard Southworth
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rasworth

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #12 on: June 03, 2017, 11:18:18 am »

More speculation - manipulating a profile in this manner would provide more shadow differentiation in relative rendering mode.  Black point compensation should do the same, but perhaps RR has received complaints from less sophisticated users.

I know, getting way out in left field.

Richard Southworth
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Pat Herold

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #13 on: June 05, 2017, 05:15:57 pm »

My goodness!  It’s a great big crazy world of color out there isn’t it?  This is exactly what’s good about forums like this.  You get to bring up a topic and have it viewed from many different perspectives.  Hopefully this kind of dialog can be very illuminating.

I’ve worked for CHROMiX over 10 years now, and that whole time I’ve watched Steve Upton pounding the drum for polarized measurements at every chance he gets.   He does not keep it a secret.  We have hammered on X-Rite to put polarizing filters in more of their instruments.  We had Konica Minolta personnel from Japan in our offices just last month, and he was selling the virtues of polarized measurements to the actual instrument makers.  We’ve brought this topic up in trade shows, conferences - we’ve mentioned it in our blog, in our newsletter.     So from the profile producer’s point of view, it’s rather frustrating that knowledgeable people in the industry still don’t seem to know about or consider polarized measurements.
http://blog.chromix.com/2010/04/

Certain media types benefit from polarized measurements because the polarization filter helps the light from the surface enter the spectrophotometer at a more direct angle.  Canvas and other fabrics benefit from this treatment a lot, but also matte papers and even flat papers from toner-based printers.  These kinds of media are notorious for having blacks and shadows that get “blocked up” in the shadows.  This kind of measurement treatment will produce profiles that give more shadow detail than you’d otherwise see.  And this additional shadow detail is built right into the profile, so you receive the benefit of it whether or not you have an app that does black point compensation, and regardless of rendering intent.   A by-product of taking polarized measurements is that the darker patches actually measure darker, and the profile reflects those darker measurements.   This has no effect on the overall darkness of the printed result.

The typical i1Pro can do a decent job of producing good profiles, but people come to us for profiles when they want to get that last bit of accuracy and quality that make their prints the best they can be.   These matte-surfaced profiles for example are not made to satisfy those who want them to look correct in ColorThink, but are made to produce the best prints they possibly can.  Soft-proofing with these profiles will naturally show a slightly more saturated preview, but it is a trade-off that most people using this troublesome media gladly prefer, and that’s why we go in that direction.

I like to geek out as well as the next guy, but at thirteen posts we might all want to stop counting numbers, take a step back, take a deep breath.    I’d like to hear from someone who has actually printed with one of these profiles?   
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #14 on: June 05, 2017, 05:39:32 pm »


A by-product of taking polarized measurements is that the darker patches actually measure darker, and the profile reflects those darker measurements.   This has no effect on the overall darkness of the printed result.
Is there published data on this?  Is there a comparison between matte and gloss paper as to the effect of the polarizing filter?  I would have to go back to my physics books to try to figure out whether there should be a difference or not (something that I was better prepared to do fifty years ago).

Quote
The typical i1Pro can do a decent job of producing good profiles, but people come to us for profiles when they want to get that last bit of accuracy and quality that make their prints the best they can be.   These matte-surfaced profiles for example are not made to satisfy those who want them to look correct in ColorThink, but are made to produce the best prints they possibly can.  Soft-proofing with these profiles will naturally show a slightly more saturated preview, but it is a trade-off that most people using this troublesome media gladly prefer, and that’s why we go in that direction.

I like to geek out as well as the next guy, but at thirteen posts we might all want to stop counting numbers, take a step back, take a deep breath.    I’d like to hear from someone who has actually printed with one of these profiles?
I plan to do just that with a profile I make and the one RR has on their website.  By way of you final comments, did CHROMiX prepare the profiles for RR?
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MHMG

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #15 on: June 05, 2017, 07:16:15 pm »


Certain media types benefit from polarized measurements because the polarization filter helps the light from the surface enter the spectrophotometer at a more direct angle.  Canvas and other fabrics benefit from this treatment a lot, but also matte papers and even flat papers from toner-based printers.  These kinds of media are notorious for having blacks and shadows that get “blocked up” in the shadows.  This kind of measurement treatment will produce profiles that give more shadow detail than you’d otherwise see.  And this additional shadow detail is built right into the profile, so you receive the benefit of it whether or not you have an app that does black point compensation, and regardless of rendering intent.   A by-product of taking polarized measurements is that the darker patches actually measure darker, and the profile reflects those darker measurements.   This has no effect on the overall darkness of the printed result.


Pheroid, thanks. I like to learn something new every day. I just tested out your argument with my vernerable old Spectrolino that does have a Polarizing filter attachment. I always knew is was a useful filter for glossy and very "toothy" canvas stocks that show all sorts of specular reflections coming off the surface every which way, but I never thought it would offer a significantly different measured value when using traditional matte finish media like Hahnemuhle Photo Rag, etc., because there is no specular component to be seen visually. And yet, I just measured a the L*min value on a sheet of Moab Entrada Natural (quite similar in smooth surface matte texture to Hahnemuhle Photo Rag) with my Spectrolino's polarizing filter in place, and then again without. The sample was printed on an HP Z3200.  Yikes.. the value without is what I'm used to measuring, i.e. L*min = 17.  The value with filter in place dropped to 5.6!  I stand before you a humbled man, but I also know that it is now time for me to further study which filter set will truly create the better profile. You say it's the polarized data set. Xrite engineers don't know that?  Wow.  I would personally like to reserve judgement until I've had a chance to study the matter further.  Anyway, thanks to you and Steve for the heads up on this issue. Who Knew! Bummer if it means, my new i!Pro2 just got obsoleted by my classic Spectrolino/spectroscan that's no longer made.

kind regards,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com
« Last Edit: June 05, 2017, 07:36:20 pm by MHMG »
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #16 on: June 05, 2017, 07:18:13 pm »

Sadly, I think you mean "no longer made"?
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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MHMG

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #17 on: June 05, 2017, 07:37:03 pm »

Sadly, I think you mean "no longer made"?

Typo fixed. Thanks
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MHMG

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #18 on: June 05, 2017, 07:44:50 pm »

And now the discussion turns to "which is the better profile?"  I prep images very differently when printing on matte papers versus glossy, in part due to the nature of the high L*min recorded by spectros that aren't using polarizing filters when measuring matte media. Will my editing techniques change significantly if I use a profile built from a data set using polarizing filter? Will it be easier or harder to achieve good shadow detail in the final print? Inquiring minds want to know :)

best,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Red River Palo Duro Etching matte paper on Epson 3880 - first look
« Reply #19 on: June 05, 2017, 08:36:47 pm »

Wow also.  My VLM cartridge will arrive tomorrow and I can print a profile target.  I have also downloaded the RR profile and will compare prints using the Outback test print.  I also have some B/W images with tricky shadow detail that might also be good to print.

This still leaves a big question for those of us that create profiles.  My i1 is a standard spectrometer, how do we get the necessary instrument if a polarizer is important?
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