Digital BW, The Print

I've recently run fade tests on Museo and Eclipse papers, in both cases
comparing them to Epson Archival Matte as the standard.  (That is, I always
put an EAM test strip in the fader along with the other papers and use it as
the standard for comparison.)  The inkset used was MIS VM, with the neutral
curve.

Scans of the test strips are or will soon be in the Files section of this
forum.

Eclipse did very well, fading and warm-shifting slightly less than EAM in
the midtones, and even tying the EAM fading in the dark tones.  The paper
yellowed only 2/3 as much as EAM.  Basically, Eclipse is now the best of the
papers I've tested with respect to fading and warm-shifting with this
inkset.  Too bad it's black is only 95% compared to EAM's 100% black.

Museo did fairly well also.  Of particular note with Museo, the paper did
not yellow at all.  The midtones faded just slightly more than EAM.  The
paper warm shifted slightly less than EAM at first, but later was about the
same.  The bad news is that the very dark tones faded more than twice as
much as EAM.  When first printed, the Museo black is 97% when levels is set
to EAM's 100%.

Note that while I run these tests, typically, to 300 hours, most of the
warm-shifting occurs within the first 100 hours.  Different inksets and
papers, however, do act somewhat differently.  As an example, in the latest
test, looking just at the 50% patch of the test strips, EAM and Eclipse both
warm-shifted 8 units at 100 hours. Eclipse stayed there through 300 hours.
EAM warmed up to 10 units by 200 hours, and then stayed the same at 300
hours.  A different VM mix warmed only 4 units at 100 hours on EAM,
increasing to 6 at 200 and 7 at 300 hours.

The midtone fading follows a similar pattern, with most occurring in the
first 100 hours.  However, it does continue, but at a slower rate.  In
general, the fading is not that great in the midtones even at 300 hours.
None of the midtones faded more than 10% relative to the starting density in
these tests.  Visually, warming is the more serious issue with this
pigmented inkset.

(I define warming as the change in the red-blue channel readings, and these
are units of the 256 scale, though the white and black points are not set at
the maximum 0,255.  So, they are relative measures only.)

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com