Digital BW, The Print

I just received my sample pack of Ink Jet Art's "Museum Digital Art" paper.
It's a 205 gsm, double-sided, acid-free, cotton paper that appears to be a
good value.

It feeds and prints well in my 1160 with the MIS Ultra Tone inkset.  The
standard curves could use a little tweaking to be perfect on it, but they
are very close as is.

The general look of the paper is very smooth.  I think the smoothness rivals
EEM.

The only problem I see with the paper is that the dmax is only 1.56.  The
competing cotton papers -- Epson UltraSmooth, PhotoRag, and perhaps Eclipse
(if there is any left) -- get a bit over 1.60.  EEM gets about 1.65.  So,
with Eboni black, the Ink Jet Art paper is at a disadvantage.

To see if a higher ink load such as what a RIP might be able to do, I double
printed a test strip.  The dmax stayed at 1.56.  So, I'd say it is doubtful
whether a RIP will be able to do any better than the Epson driver.

To see if less ink would raise the dmax, I printed a test strip with the
driver set to "Photo Quality Ink Jet" paper.  The dmax stayed at 1.56.

Perhaps a different black ink would do better, but with Eboni (and I'm
guessing Piezo Museum) 1.56 looks like it is about as good as we're going to
get on this paper.

Overall, aside from a slightly weak dmax, this paper looks like a winner.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com