Digital BW, The Print

You would have thought that it was in paper manufacturers interests to provide really 
good quality canned profiles with their products! Having just gone through a process of 
color testing half a dozen papers for an exhibition project, I am astounded at how poorly 
many manufacturers support their products.

As a typical example, Innova have a couple of really nice looking papers, and the 
packaging promises that profiles are available. Well and good except that there are no 
media setting instructions with their profiles! Several phone calls to the UK and I am put in 
touch with their profile expert in the US. Some settings are emailed to me.

The resultant prints are truly awful - pissy mid tones and posterization in the shadows. 
Eventually after downloading BookSmart profiles and with lots of experimentation with 
different media settings, I got decent prints.

I am sure that many of us have been given or bought paper samples to try, only to give up 
and discard them when it becomes a major mission to even get some sort of result for 
evaluation.  You need to have some incentive to invest in the time and money to go to the 
next stage and build or purchase your own profiles.

I would haver thought that canned profiles for download + media settings must figure 
somewhere in Inkjet Paper Marketing 101. Epson seem to have that sussed.

If Epson get 10/10 and Innova get 2/10, are there models of good practice out there that 
list members can recommend?