Newbie LR question: Develop adjustment for warmer paper colour?

[RobinFaichney]

I'm very new to LR -- to photo processing generally, in fact -- and not getting to spend much time on it at the moment, though that's beside the point.

After several test prints of one shot on one paper stock I got what I thought looked good then switched to another paper to find the result too warm due to the paper colour. The question, which no doubt will strike many as quite stupid: is there likely to be a single LR adjustment I can make to compensate for the warmer paper? The first paper was Epson Photo Quality Inkjet and the second Epson Velvet Fine Art. I thought of "faking" it using WB, but then I decided to ask here first, as I have plenty of other things to be getting on with while awaiting a response, and sometimes it's better to ask for help than just thrash around blindly.

[Tony Jay]

If you have paper/printer profiles for the papers in question then using softproofing you ought to be able to make appropriate adjustments.

However there is NO single magic bullet type adjustment here - it is actually all in the eye of the beholder.
Possibly changing white balance may do the trick but exactly how much - now that would be up to your judgement since there just isn't an equation that numbers can be slotted in for a hey presto result.

Furthermore to really get the hang of printing with any paper several "round trips" are required before one gets the hang of how the paper/ink combination behaves allowing one to get predictable results.

(I have made a bit of an assumption that you have some insight here so I have NOT walked you through the process step by step.)

Regards

Tony Jay

[RobinFaichney]

Thanks Tony. I was kind of expecting something along the lines of "no single magic bullet" but thought it was worth asking anyway. Re not walking me through, that's OK, I have both the Intro and Advanced LR tutorials as well as Camera to Print and Screen, I just need to find more time to spend on them!

[RobinFaichney]

I realised there's an aspect to this that I've been taking for granted so far, but I need to make it clear (ironically):

The reason the paper colour has such an effect on this image is that in some areas of the print the ink is not opaque, so the paper colour is mixing with the ink colour, giving a muddy effect.

Or that's my impression anyway. Maybe it's normal, being taken for granted in the contributions above. Or not?

[Tony Jay]

Yes, Robin.

'Warm' or 'cool' papers are described thus precisely because they affect the look of the print.
Because the result is purely an aesthetic one what you need to do is experiment and learn which sorts of papers give the result you like.
A particular paper may just never give you what you want, yet another paper may hit the mark.
What is acceptable, and desirable, is absolutely subjective.
Most expert printers appear to use only a very few surfaces, a gloss or semi-gloss, matte, and maybe a canvas type as well - so only two or three papers. They do change occassionally, but a lot of testing and comparison is involved.

It appears that the 'cool' paper gives you what you like but the 'warm' paper doesn't - it is possible that you may never warm to the 'warm' paper and that is absolutely fine.

Tony Jay