I am posting this at the risk of revealing myself to be a member of an apparently tiny minority of Lula members who do not own nor plan to own an inkjet printer.
I certainly would love to have the superior color gamut of inkjet pigment printing, the print longevity, the apparent detail; but also the smoothness and seemingly infinite detail of the N-surface paper from large format film, and for it not to cost a fortune, and for the prints not to be damaged by a slip of the finger.
I don't have the room to house a top quality inkjet printer nor the patience to deal with various necessities for getting excellent prints (calibrating the printer, different profiles for each paper, keeping them in sync and up-todate, dealing with machine maintenance and periodic problems, and so on).
Those inkjet labs that I have tried either did not offer printing on papers that interested me for most purposes (e.g. WhiteWall) or others that I tried were too expensive, and the quality of output that varied from mediocre to poor.
What I would like to find is a printing process that will give me the quality I found so attractive with color prints made on N surface paper from large format film, yet to have that with photos now taken with full-frame or small medium format size cameras. I like to look at a print with the proverbial nose to the print. Not a practical way of looking, but that's what floats my last-century boat :-).
I'm sure inkjet printing has improved since I last tried, but I don't know what labs I should consider, nor the exact paper surface (although come to think of it there is probably plenty of info on appropriate papers already here on Lula).
I am interested in the Lumjet printing process and also am a little bit interested with WhiteWall's so-called HD process (although WhiteWall offers their 400 PPI process only on glossy paper which I generally don't like). Lumjet offers various papers types including a type of Matte which might be what I'm looking for.
While the Lumjet process may not interest the vast majority of those here, I am glad the article was published, and I may give Lumjet a try. While it doesn't seem like Lumjet would fulfill all my needs (restriction on sizes, mounting options), at least it may be useful for some of my purposes, and also perhaps for at least a few others here on Lula. Even if not, I personally find it interesting to read in detail about improved processes.
My thanks to Mark Segal, and also to Kevin.
Dan
P.S. Hey, I love those posting verification questions. But arithmetic is just so last-century. How about some questions involving calculus, or quantum mechanics. I need something to challenge my aging and increasingly lazy brain :-)