Digital BW, The Print

Hello Michael,

>A few more questions if you can bear with me:

Excellent questions.  Some of them are addressed in the "Great Paper
Chase" article.  At the bottom of it is a short discussion about OBAs
with some web links and a quote from Diana York from Hawk Mtn papers
(of Condor and Merlin fame).  Bottom line is all OBAs are not created
equal.  Older formulations "burn off" more quickly than newer ones. 
OBAs can be in either the paper, the coating, or both.  So to simply
say a paper has OBAs or not doesn't really give enough information to
make a good judgement (unless you want to avoid them completely).

For example, I have observed in a Condor BW print, an extremely bright
pure white paper, that after several months of open exposure to room
light (daylight and fluorescent) the hard edge of brightness lessens
noticeably and the paper color moves from P1 (whitest in the scale
used in the article) to about what would be not quite P2, maybe P1.75.
 Yet the paper remains a "white" paper, not even close to the cream
color of most non-OBA papers, and its neutral treatment of Eboni
doesn't change.  For me, this is an acceptable amount of "burn off"
and it's a really nice Paper.

Premier Hot Press is a beautiful paper (in several ways), but one
thing that is rarely mentioned is that it is extremely warm in color,
near the top of the scale in the review.  So personal taste comes
strongly into play for any paper on an extreme end of the color scale,
either warm or cool.  Its has a hard smooth surface (producing
very sharp resolution), has a moderate contrast curve giving good
shadow control, doesn't seem to flake, and has excellent Dmax, no
OBAs, and a beautiful appearance of depth.  Wow, what a lineup!  But
if you don't like extremely warm prints...(you can always put cool ink
on it but then you'll have a print with cool shadows and very warm
highlights...which, depending on the image, can look pretty bizarre).

In addition, paper color does not always match how it renders ink. 
There are at least two papers in the review that render carbon inks
cooler than other papers of the same color.  I call these "cross-over"
papers.  If using a variable tone ink with these, you'd have to dial
in a warmer ink to match another paper with same paper color.

As for thick papers in the 2200 top feeder, I can feed even 300 Condor
through if I give it a tiny nudge to get it started (I can't put in a
stack and walk away).  As for ink getting on the paper, it depends on
the curvature.  Photo Rag, for example, is concave on the coated side
(the edges want to turn up).  So even the thin 188 stuff will get
smudged edges if you don't bend back the rear corners beforehand. 
Merlin Smooth, on the other hand, is convex on the coated side.  I
don't do any bending and don't get ink on the edges.  Condor is
two-sided, so it has almost no curl and has no edge problem.

All this is to say that it's too easy to make generalizations about
any of this.  There are lots of individual things to grade a paper
about, and if you pay attention and take notes you find that nearly
every paper is a unique mix of these various atributes.  That's why I
organized the article as I did, to try to illustrate that fact.  Each
paper has to be evaluated for its complete mix of characteristics:
thickness, curl, texture, hardness, paper color, ink color, OBAs,
flaking, reflectivity, contrast, Dmax, cost, availability,
longevity... in other words, ultimately you must do your own testing
and research.  The "Paper chase" article perhaps can help narrow down
the selection.

Speaking of the article, I have just come back from a business trip
for which I spent months preparing, and hope to get back to testing
more papers in the coming weeks.  I'll post a notice here after I've
updated the article.

Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm