Entrada vs. HPR

[gfabbri]

I'm auditioning some paper on my r2880 and having a tough time comparing two of my matte paper finalists -- any recommendations would be quite welcome!

I like the feel, warmth, and texture of both HPR and Entrada Natural, but the dark tones and color saturation and accuracy of HPR is far better to my eye, using the canned profiles.  I find the Entrada images feature relatively unsaturated and orangey reds, and a compressed/blocked shadow response.  OTOH, I like the cost and availability of sizes of Entrada far better.

I guess my question boils down to whether properly profiled Entrada can render images similarly to HPR, and whether the differences I see in my test prints are likely a function of the quality of profiles or inherent features of the papers.

Can anyone save me a potentially wasted custom profile for Entrada?

Many thanks!

-Gian

[colinm]

Moab's canned profiles get the job done (God knows they're better than the crap they were providing a couple years ago), but a good custom profile really makes the most of the paper. As a matter of personal preference, I actually prefer the Entrada when using custom profiles with both it and HPR.

If you've got some paper to spare, throw a stepwedge on both of them—unmanaged—using various paper types. It's not perfect, but it may help give you a slightly better idea of what both can accomplish. Moab occasionally recommends settings that overink, and that doesn't do them any favors in shadow detail.

[gfabbri]

Thanks for the info and your thoughts -- sounds like it's definitely worthwhile to get a custom profile made up for the Entrada. Worst case, I'll be out $40 or so, or about 10 sheets of HPR...

Nevertheless, one must wonder how much of users' opinions of various papers is due to the quality (or lack thereof) of the canned profiles. It seems like manufacturers would be doing themselves an incredible disservice by supplying suboptimal profiles.

-Gian

[neile]

I guess my question boils down to whether properly profiled Entrada can render images similarly to HPR, and whether the differences I see in my test prints are likely a function of the quality of profiles or inherent features of the papers.

The Moab profiles are done by Andy Biggs who frequents this forum on a regular basis and is a contributor of several articles to Luminous Landscape. Perhaps he can chime in and comment on whether what you're seeing is typical of the Entrada paper.

Neil

[abiggs]

Neil, I think a better way of phrasing it would be: "Andy *now* handles the profiles, and older profiles may or may not be up to his standards, and will always look at ways of improving the quality of the profiles".

:-)

[ckimmerle]

In my experience, proper profiles make HPR and Entrada very, very close. I eventually decided to go with HPR as I thought, at the time, I saw a bit more shadow separation. It was more than likely just in my head.

[abiggs]

Entrada was originally created to be a USA manufactured, lower cost alternative to Photo Rag. With a cost that is significantly less expensive, Entrada has turned out to be a very very popular paper without a compromise in quality. It is also nice that it is double sided, comes in both 190gsm and 300gsm weights, and also in Bright White and Natural versions. As far as profiles go, the challenge for any manufacturer is deciding which printers to purchase for the creation of those profiles. Some printers will never be used again, and others will be used all of the time for trade shows and the like. I do help out in the creation of these profiles, and have spent a significant amount of time in the past 18 months with the newer printers. If there are profiles for printers that you think are not up to snuff, I would love to know why.

[gfabbri]

All (and especially Andy)-

I certainly hope my comments haven't ruffled too many feathers -- that was certainly not my intent.  

In any event, per my earlier post, I have noticed that my test images (including Bill Atkinson's profile test image from http://homepage.mac.com/billatkinson/FileSharing2.html) printed on my 2880 with the Entrada Natural profile and "Velvet" paper setting exhibit fairly compressed / blocked shadows and reduced saturation in the red-oranges to red hues, as well as a shifting of reds toward orange.  These effects are particularly visible on the strawberry and Arches images within Bill's test image, and the shadow compression is most evident in the sequence of black to white blocks (apologies for not knowing the correct term for this pattern), where the darkest gray patch is very nearly indistinguishable from the black patch.

These observations are relative to identical test prints made with canned profiles on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308, HPR Bright 310, Ilford Gold Fibre Silk, and Epson Exhibition Fiber.

I suspect that profile making is a bit of an art, and not owning a print spectrometer, I really have no idea whose profiles are "correct," though the Hahn and Ilford profiles are a closer match to my profiled monitor screen than is the Entrada profile.

In any event, take this all for what it's worth -- these are just my observations -- and I very well may end up using Entrada as my go-to paper -- it really is a beautiful paper and I really appreciate the diversity of sizes available as well as its cost advantage vs. HPR et.al.

Best wishes to all,

Gian

[abiggs]

Unfortunately, I have found on most 13" printers, the consistency between units isn't as good as Epson's pro level printers from 17 inches on up the food chain. I have found that I can make a profile that is pretty darned good on one unit, and then every now and then a printer won't be as ideal as I would have hoped. The R2880 is an awesome printer, for sure, and the variance between units is sooooooooo much better than the old 2200 days. Sometimes I just cannot explain why I can get a great print from one printer and not another one.

Please email me offline with a private message and I have a couple of thoughts.....

Andy

[gfabbri]

Please email me offline with a private message and I have a couple of thoughts.....

Andy

Just shot you an e-mail via your website -- Thanks!

[Pete Berry]

If you haven't already, why not compare them using identical inking (and media type) - eg with your HPR profile. This can tell you a lot about the paper characteristics. I've found over the years that papers of a type are much more alike than they are different, and that an excellent profile for one paper can, in the absence of an equally good one for another (of the same PK or MK family), be substituted with excellent results, and fine-tuned if necessary with driver tweaks (which remain active with profile/PS control in my iPF5000).

Heresy, I know!

Pete

[gfabbri]

Heresy, I know!

Pete

I like your idea, Pete -- and its iconoclastic flavor!

Best,

Gian

[eronald]

I'll donate a free profile for any LL reader who does not need extensive handholding to print the target.

You can even have your choice of Barbieri/Argyll or (iSis or DTP70)Monaco but I refuse to provide PMP profiles to third parties.
 
Edmund

[Pete Berry]

I like your idea, Pete -- and its iconoclastic flavor!

Best,

Gian

I'll give you a little background that led me to this conclusion: Couple of years ago, when the wave of new baryta papers was washing in, I wanted to know how they were different from "ordinary" PK papers. So I did a controlled "experiment" in which I printed 8.5x11's of all of them I could get, and several convertional types, with the same driver settings - Canon iPF5000 "Special #5" media type (with slight driver tweaks), which I had used for a couple of pearls and satins. These included Harmon Gloss Fb AL, Ilford GFS, Red River Lux Art Satin Rag, Hahne. Fine Art Pearl, Photo Rag Pearl, and Photo Rag Satin baryta papers; Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl, Red River UltraPro Satin 2.0 and Polar Satin - nine papers, printing three different printer test images: Andrew Rodney's, Atkinson's, and the bottom half of Dry Creek Photo's with the four racially diverse children (for accurate skin tones).

The objective results? Not a nickle's worth of difference between the papers, except for the flat and under saturated Hahne. Photo Rag Satin, which looked like an aRGB file printed in sRGB color space (yes, I re-printed it!). There were differences due to the warmth or coolness of the paper base, skin tones shading slightly to magenta in the coolest (Fine Art Pearl), to slightly yellow in the warmest (Photo Rag Pearl), with the others falling in-between. All would be considered excellent prints - no color shifts I could see in Color Checker, pure color squares, or continuous color spectrum in Rodney's, (and looking again as I type), middle gray and shadow densities virtually the same; subtle skin tone differences dictated by paper base tint. To use a good British word, I was gobsmacked.

So choosing a paper, for me, came down to the intangibles of surface, feel, "depth", "presence", and price. Ilford GFS rose to the top, and RR UltraPro Satin my proofing paper, with a quite similar warmish base tone. Printed with the same profile or driver settings, difficult to tell apart, and a wasted sheet of GFS is rare.

I did the same with ten or so conventional mattes - both proofing and fine art types - and found a larger spread in results, mainly in contrast and saturation between the cheaper and higher end, which could be compensated in driver settings except for difficult reds. The Hahne. and Innova cotton rags shone there.

One of these days before I get too old (just turned 70) I'll scan these up in a data base on my V700 and make them available. Like I said, Gian, even very diverse papers are much more alike than different. If you have a great profile for one paper, give it a try with others.

Pete

[JeffKohn]

I think you definitely have to be careful when evaluating papers using the manufacturer profiles.  I don't know anything about their newer profiles now that Andy is doing them; but when I evaluated Moab Entrada on my  Epson 2400 about 4 years ago, the test prints were awful using Moab-supplied profile: weak DMax, terrible shadow gamut, etc. The HPR test prints were so much better that the choice was a no-brainer. I later found out the real problem was the Entrada profile, not the paper itself, but by that point I had already settled on HPR as my standard matte paper.

So I would say if you're seeing unexpected/drastic differences between two papers when evaluating them, you might try as Pete suggested and use the profile from the "better" paper to print on the "worse" paper and see what happens. You probably won't get perfect color matching, but it may give you a better idea about other aspects of print quality so you can decide whether it's worth choosing that paper and getting a custom profile for it.

[JeffKohn]

The objective results? Not a nickle's worth of difference between the papers, except for the flat and under saturated Hahne. Photo Rag Satin, which looked like an aRGB file printed in sRGB color space (yes, I re-printed it!). There were differences due to the warmth or coolness of the paper base, skin tones shading slightly to magenta in the coolest (Fine Art Pearl), to slightly yellow in the warmest (Photo Rag Pearl), with the others falling in-between. All would be considered excellent prints - no color shifts I could see in Color Checker, pure color squares, or continuous color spectrum in Rodney's, (and looking again as I type), middle gray and shadow densities virtually the same; subtle skin tone differences dictated by paper base tint. To use a good British word, I was gobsmacked.

Your result with HPR Satin is not surprising, as I believe that is a matte-black paper. So it would be especially bad if used with photo-black paper/ink settings (and even with the correct black ink it won't be able to compare to the glossy, photo-black papers when it comes to dmax).

I don't think all papers of a given type are the same, although it may seem that way if you use the same printer/media settings for all them. I've found that different papers can handle different ink loads, and too much ink can hurt print quality just like too little ink can. For instance, Special 5 lays down the most ink, and for some papers this will be too much. Shadow gamut will suffer because the darkest tones turn into an indistinguishable, murky mess that the profiling software treats as out-of-gamut.

So figuring out the correct printer/media settings to deliver the optimal ink load is key to getting the most out of a given paper.  Unfortunately there's no quick and easy way to determine this, it takes testing which can be both time- and ink-consuming. This may explain why some manufacturer profiles are so bad, they just don't take the time to determine the optimal settings for each printer/paper combination. It also explains why the Epson profiles for their own papers are so good, as they should be very well matched to the media types for obvious reasons.

[Pete Berry]

Your result with HPR Satin is not surprising, as I believe that is a matte-black paper. So it would be especially bad if used with photo-black paper/ink settings (and even with the correct black ink it won't be able to compare to the glossy, photo-black papers when it comes to dmax).

I don't think all papers of a given type are the same, although it may seem that way if you use the same printer/media settings for all them. I've found that different papers can handle different ink loads, and too much ink can hurt print quality just like too little ink can. For instance, Special 5 lays down the most ink, and for some papers this will be too much. Shadow gamut will suffer because the darkest tones turn into an indistinguishable, murky mess that the profiling software treats as out-of-gamut.

So figuring out the correct printer/media settings to deliver the optimal ink load is key to getting the most out of a given paper.  Unfortunately there's no quick and easy way to determine this, it takes testing which can be both time- and ink-consuming. This may explain why some manufacturer profiles are so bad, they just don't take the time to determine the optimal settings for each printer/paper combination. It also explains why the Epson profiles for their own papers are so good, as they should be very well matched to the media types for obvious reasons.

Jeff, believe me - I was blown away by the totally unexpected results, as I was looking for differences, not similarities, and have repeatedly searched the box of 100 or more 8.5x11's for differences in highlight and shadow handling, as I mention above. A specific custom profile - high-end, which I won't identify, was clearly much worse for it's intended paper, as were manufacturers profiles. I would have tried the HPR Satin with Mk ink, but used my two sheets with the reprint.

As far as ink-handling, the only real outlier was in the matte bunch I tried using Canon's "Premium Matte Paper" settings - Crane Museo looked very strange before drying, with pooling and blocked shadows, but much better after several days - still too dense. And RR's fine art matte (can't recall name) was lacking in density and contrast.

Would you be up to trying this yourself on several PK papers with the same good profile? I'd be most interested in the results. I think I had a fairly broad sampling, but didn't have any Canon or Epson papers.

But maybe it's just my eyes, so I'll make you an offer you can't refuse: Since you have showed an interest in this, and a healthy scepticism, how about my mailing you the originals, and you take a look for yourself and report your findings to the forum - maybe make some densitometric measurements if you have the equipment - I don't.

Pete

[howseth]

Pete: Too bad you did not try the HPR Photo Rag Satin with the correct inks - it has a lovely and unique surface quality: my favorite paper ( I don't want glossy, I don't want mat: this seems somewhat in between those surfaces ...

Howard

[JeffKohn]

Jeff, believe me - I was blown away by the totally unexpected results, as I was looking for differences, not similarities, and have repeatedly searched the box of 100 or more 8.5x11's for differences in highlight and shadow handling, as I mention above. A specific custom profile - high-end, which I won't identify, was clearly much worse for it's intended paper, as were manufacturers profiles. I would have tried the HPR Satin with Mk ink, but used my two sheets with the reprint.

As far as ink-handling, the only real outlier was in the matte bunch I tried using Canon's "Premium Matte Paper" settings - Crane Museo looked very strange before drying, with pooling and blocked shadows, but much better after several days - still too dense. And RR's fine art matte (can't recall name) was lacking in density and contrast.

Would you be up to trying this yourself on several PK papers with the same good profile? I'd be most interested in the results. I think I had a fairly broad sampling, but didn't have any Canon or Epson papers.

But maybe it's just my eyes, so I'll make you an offer you can't refuse: Since you have showed an interest in this, and a healthy scepticism, how about my mailing you the originals, and you take a look for yourself and report your findings to the forum - maybe make some densitometric measurements if you have the equipment - I don't.

Pete

I can't see myself having time to carry out such an experiment in the near future. I still think your approach of using the same profile for all of the papers will not give you the full picture.  Ideally you would create a custom profile for each paper using a consistent methodology. I've done enough custom profiles to know that the papers won't be exactly the same, there will often be differences in DMax or shadow gamut, in particular. Sometimes the differences are subtle, sometimes they're more noticeable. For instance Hahnemuhle Photo Rag has a larger gamut and higher DMax than Epson Ultrasmooth; it's enough of a difference that it will show in prints.