Pictorico Velvety: Color, B&W, Bronzing
I'm hesitant to post too many comments regarding color prints at this stage as outside of Epson papers there's not a whole lot of profiles available, and I don't have a whole lot of Epson papers :)
I've been printing on Pictorico Velvety which is similar to Epson's Semi-gloss/Lustre, using Epson's Lustre profile. I hope to get a profile made for Velvety in the next few days.
I've examined the Velvety prints and can see very little bronzing - very good. I'll take another look tomorrow under different lighting.
Some people use the terms 'bronzing' and 'gloss differential' interchangeably, others use them to refer to two different things. I fall into the latter. When I say bronzing I'm talking about when at a given angle large areas of the print, mainly shadows/high density areas, take on a 'bronzed' look. You know it when you see it, it looks very weird and caused a lot of people including myself to give up on printing on anything but matte papers. On the other hand, an example of gloss differential in my world is when there are blown highlight areas in the print where no or little ink has been laid and these areas reflect light differently and you see 'gloss differential', not really the same look as bronzing.
I still see gloss differential on barrier papers like Velvety and Epson's PSPP - unless Epson implemented something like a gloss optimizer (which I half thought they might on this printer) I'm not sure how they can ever completely get around it on papers that don't readily absorb the pigment ink. There's always the spray can. So has gloss differential improved any? I don't know - I need to do more back to back comparisons.
Anyway - minimal bronzing = great!
B&W on Pictorico Velvety looks beautiful - I prefer it much more than the look of Epson's PSPP. Color on Velvety looks very nice also, even just using Epson's Lustre profile. I think chances are a profile will squeek out some improvements.
As it stands I'd probably say aside from problems like bronzing being addressed (which is great), there isn't huge, immediately eye catching improvements in color prints, which were very good before, and they haven't gone backwards in any way as far as I can see. The wow factor is in the B&W improvements, you can't miss them.
Like I mentioned in the beginning though, too early to say with color for me, especially with my limited stock. I intend to buy a small section of non matte Epson papers in the next day or two and explore further, printing the same file to both the 2100 and 4800 and comparing.
I'll also be printing a few of the same files using Velvety on the 2100 tomorrow and comparing to those out of the 4800 on Velvety.
posted by Pete Walsh @ 12:30 AM 5 comments
At 7:03 AM,
scott graham said...
Re Bronzing:
how many people would you guess look at Monet's from a high angle to see if he had bronzing problems.
None I would say; and they don't care.
and if he used oils, not sure but Rembrant did, he definitely had bronzing.
So only we techno nuts care, and I am trying hard to get beyond it.
Artfully yours
Scott
At 12:08 PM,
John said...
Pete-
You may also want to compare the 2100 prints with the 4800 prints in regard to metamerism. Would it be substantially less on the 4800 because of the extra light black?
-John
At 6:31 PM,
Pete Walsh said...
Scott I agree with your general premise - we definitely do WAAYYY too much measurebating - maybe that lets us make excuses for making less images...
But the bronzing problem was too bad on non matte paper on the 2100. I remember hanging a selection of prints on semigloss in a store - my first out of the 2100, then walked around the room looking at the prints. I was completely surprised and disappointed at how chronic the bronzing effect was, especially given that from where people generally stood in the room and looked around, bronzing was evident, to the extent that in a short amount of time people commented on the 'weird' look.
Shortly after, I removed all the prints and replaced them with matte prints.
I don't know that the comparison to paintings is completely valid- it's a different set of expectations people bring to printed images.
At 11:36 PM,
Pete Walsh said...
John I hope to make comments on metamerism on color prints, 2100 vs 4800 tomorrow. What I can say now is that a 2100 B&W EAM displays signficant metamerism compared to a 4800 B&W on PSPP, it's amazing to walk around through different lighting holding the two side by side - and I always thought the EAM was pretty good!
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