New Canson Infinity Somerset Matte Papers

[1PhotoGuyinNM]

Calling all printing devotees. Has anyone had any experience using the new Canson Infinity: 1) Somerset Enhanced Satin, 2) Somerset Enhanced Velvet, and 3) Somerset Enhanced Watercolour fine art inkjet papers? In particular, I was wonder how they compare with the newish Arches 88, BFK Rives and Arches Aquarelle which are outstanding papers with excellent Dmax and Lmin.  Has anyone had a chance to profile or print with any of the new Somerset papers?   

Canson describes these papers as follows:

Somerset Enhanced Velvet is a mould-made, 100% cotton rag digital fine art paper that is available in 330gsm, 255gsm and 225gsm. The Somerset® Enhanced Velvet has a fine grain texture which accentuates the detail in the final image, and the natural white base, which contains no optical brightening agents, adds vibrancy and depth to colour, excellent contrast, and very deep blacks.

The Somerset Enhanced Watercolour White has a traditional watercolour ‘cold pressed’ surface finish. The 100% cotton mould made paper, has a natural white base, produced without the use of optical brighteners. The paper has a soft, refined feel to the touch.

The Somerset Enhanced Satin surface has a timeless quality which accentuates all the detail in the final print without any distractions. The 100% cotton mould made paper contains no optical brighteners, and the natural white base adds colour, depth, and vitality to the final print.

[1PhotoGuyinNM]

Pictures of the different Canson Somerset paper textures...

[1PhotoGuyinNM]

Somerset Velvet...

[1PhotoGuyinNM]

Correction, here is the satin...

[1PhotoGuyinNM]

Looking at the Gamut Volume and Dmax based on the Epson P900 profiles supplied by Canson….

Somerset Satin: 533,234 and 1.82
Somerset Velvet 535,779 and 1.82
Somerset Watercolour: 526,338 and 1.81

These papers seem to perform very well especially wrt to Dmax.  However, I think Arches 88 and BFK Rives are better in this regard. Any thoughts?

[1PhotoGuyinNM]

Wow these forums are dead.  I have been using this site for well over twenty years and have seen a dramatic decline in the number of people posting to this forum. I guess I am to blame also since I only recently started posting.   It would be interesting to hear other people’s experience, but I guess no one is using these new Canson papers.

[dgberg]

We are big Canson users, mostly Arches 88, Etching Rag, BFK Rives and the Platine Rag.
We have not tried any of the Somerset line to date. Boils down to mainly cost factors and how many different papers do we really need to offer.  Every time we add a quality paper it exceeds a $1,000 as we stock all the available sheet and roll sizes up to and including 36” rolls. Since 75% of our business is still canvas printing and mounting we cannot keep adding new papers when there is a good chance it may just sit here.
It is always good to hear about new products even if we do not plan on adding them.

[Kyle D Jackson]

Wow these forums are dead.  I have been using this site for well over twenty years and have seen a dramatic decline in the number of people posting to this forum. I guess I am to blame also since I only recently started posting.   It would be interesting to hear other people’s experience, but I guess no one is using these new Canson papers.

Yes it's definitely not what it once was..., but neither is printing in general. There's still activity here, but same-day replies are much less common.

I've been watching this thread to see what ppl have to say, but don't have anything to offer myself. I did note the gamut/Dmax values are incredibly similar across those 3 (ofc that says nothing of volume shape, etc). And ofc those are canned profiles so we don't know what individual optimization might tweak out of them until somebody tries it.

Are you planning to try some samples?

[1PhotoGuyinNM]

We are big Canson users, mostly Arches 88, Etching Rag, BFK Rives and the Platine Rag.
We have not tried any of the Somerset line to date. Boils down to mainly cost factors and how many different papers do we really need to offer.  Every time we add a quality paper it exceeds a $1,000 as we stock all the available sheet and roll sizes up to and including 36” rolls. Since 75% of our business is still canvas printing and mounting we cannot keep adding new papers when there is a good chance it may just sit here.
It is always good to hear about new products even if we do not plan on adding them.

Thanks Dan. Yes, those are some of my favorite papers also.  Recently I did extensive testing of a variety of papers primarily intended to be used with my Piezography Pro ink set and found the best matte papers based on tonal smoothness and Dmax to be BFK Rives followed by Aquarelle Rag, Arches 88, Epson Legacy Etching, Epson Legacy Fibre, Hahnemühle German Etching, Hahnemühle Museum Etching and Canson Edition.  I also tested Hahnemühle William Turner, Ilford Smooth Cotton Rag and Hahnemühle Hemp.   Really the first three papers in my list are truly outstanding hence my curiosity regarding the Somerset Enhanced line from Canson.  Canson has really done some amazing work with their matte paper coatings.  As far as the non-matte papers, Canson Platine, Epson Legacy Platine and Red River Palo Duro Soft Gloss Rag are very similar in performance and are outstanding. Might also mention Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta, Iford Gold Fibre Gloss and Canson Baryta Prestige II and Hahnemühle FineArt Baryta are also very good when using Piezography inks.

[1PhotoGuyinNM]

Yes it's definitely not what it once was..., but neither is printing in general. There's still activity here, but same-day replies are much less common.

I've been watching this thread to see what ppl have to say, but don't have anything to offer myself. I did note the gamut/Dmax values are incredibly similar across those 3 (ofc that says nothing of volume shape, etc). And ofc those are canned profiles so we don't know what individual optimization might tweak out of them until somebody tries it.

Are you planning to try some samples?

Hi Kyle, Thanks for the reply. Yes, I received a free sample pack of all three Somerset Enhanced papers.  Unfortunately, there were only two pieces of paper per sample pack.  However, I will try to linearizing these using Piezography Pro inks to see how they compare (Dmax and linearity) with other papers I tested.  I will post what I have found.   

[1PhotoGuyinNM]

Follow-up.  I made some preliminary measurements using my 11iSis and a 700 (100 x 7) patch grayscale target for all three Canson Somerset Papers.  The results are as follows:

Canson Somerset Enhanced Satin: Dmax = 1.82, Lmin = 12.730, Lmax = 98.107

Canson Somerset Enhanced Velvet: Dmax = 1.82, Lmin = 12.629, Lmax = 97.679

Canson Somerset Enhanced Watercolour: Dmax =1.82, Lmin =12.754, Lmax = 97.681

As you can see, the three papers have very similar performance. This would seem to indicate that all three papers are likely using the same coating. Also it should be noted that my measurements correlate very well with the Epson P900 profiles supplied by Canson with respect to Dmax. It is possible that with additional linearization and optimization you could expect an even slightly higher Dmax and a slightly lower Lmin than what is shown here.   In summary, I believe all three papers should be consider when printing fine art B&W prints.    They perform very similarly to Canson Arches Aquarelle, BFK Rives and Arches 88.  As a point of reference, my fully linearized and optimized measurements for the older Canson papers are as follows:

Arches Aquarelle Rag: Dmax = 1.84, Lmin = 12.271, Lmax = 96.657

Arches BFK Rives Pure White: Dmax = 1.83, Lmin = 12.434, Lmax = 96.3

Arches 88: Dmax = 1.83, Lmin = 12.433, Lmax = 96.568