Too much ink being laid down and that kind of mottling can be a product of poor printer linearization. With the new high density inks being made by Epson and Cone these days it is very important to calibrate the amount of ink being put on the paper to avoid this. This is a separate procedure from making your icc profile for color. Canon and Epson printers do a general printer linearization with their oem software . Hp Z has a separate target and workflow just for that kind of establishment of of ink lmits for each paper before you make your icc profile, which is great for matte media of all kinds . This especially helps if the paper changes from batch to batch. For black and white output Studio Print and Qtr rips do an excellent job. The Hp Vivera inks have had this ultra black MK ink for 10 years now so they developed their ink and software together. The other printers do ink limits through their media settings that you choose.
The Issue with uneven coating on the Rag Photographique and Legacy Fibre rolls is something else entirely. It has nothing to do with linearization or over inking. Its a flawed coating. It brings back memories of some of the early less sophisticated coatings we experienced many many years ago with Sommerset Velvet, Legion matte, Crane, and Innova rag media that just couldnt take pure black very well. In my experience the only two companies that really perfected matte rag inkjet coatings were Hahnenuhle and Canson. But Canson media may very well be in serious trouble. Its sad when great companies deteoriorate but such is life in the times we live in. One day your in and the next day your out.
uote author=mearussi link=topic=118824.msg986743#msg986743 date=1499477900]
Matte black blotchiness is a problem I've encountered with a few papers. My understand is that many paper companies don't seem to realize that Epson printers put out around 30%-50% more ink than Canon printers do for any given area. So if they test and calibrate their emulsions only to Canon printers they will have problems with Epson. As an example I talked to the Canson U.S. tech rep a few months ago about some of their canvases and he told me that they had to reformulate some of their canvas emulsions because they weren't capable of absorbing all of the ink Epson printers were putting out.
This problem is especially bad with Breathing Color. Many of the matte canvases and papers I've tried from them have difficulty absorbing Epson's matte black ink with the ink easily smeared and never fully drying. On their web site they have a very strong bias towards Canon printers and my guess is that's what they use to calibrate their paper with. My solution is to just use their matte papers with PK, which they actively support by providing PK profiles for their normally MK papers.
I'm also sorry Canson has ruined Rag Photographique as it was my favorite hot pressed paper, though I seldom print on matte paper (their Plantine is my favorite--hope they don't change that).
Have you tried printing the new Rag Photographique using PK ink? By making a profile using it you may find this works.
BTW, if I read your post correctly you're already printing using Canon printers. If you're getting blotchiness with Canon then Epson must be even worse.
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