Digital BW, The Print

Some may remember a few months back I expressed interest in a paper 
called Sihl Iridium Satin. It is very nice material for an RC paper, 
but the biggest drawback (until now) was unavailabilty in sheets. 
That discouraged any real interest by list members, and its just as 
well. I finally got around to doing an informal south-window 
yellowing test, and the results were not good. But I put up some 
other papers that have also been mentioned on this forum lately, and 
one that hasn't, and I can at least suggest a viable new candidate 
for those needing a luster/satin RC paper for commercial printing.

The papers I put up were: Sihl Iridium satin, Magiclee Lustre 
Photobase, Inkpress RC Lustre, Ilford Soft Gloss (yeah I know, it's 
glossy not lustre) and Oriental Graphica lustre RC. As control and 
comparison I also put up Photo rag, William Turner, and Epson 
enhanced matte. The enhanced Matte went up 3 days after the rest, it 
was a bit of an afterthought.

I left them up for only 12 days before I checked them, and after 
that short a period this is what I saw:

The enhanced matte (after only 9 days!) yelloewd the most, enough 
that no control print comparison was needed to see the shift. No 
surprise there.

Next in order of visible change was the Magiclee Photobase, Sihl 
Iridium, and the Inkpress Lustre. The Oriental Graphica survived the 
best of the lustre papers, on a par with the Ilford Soft gloss. 
There may be a measurable yellow shift in those two, but since I 
don't have a spectro, I can't verify.

There was no visible shift in either the Photo Rag or the Willie 
Turner.


That's the bad news. The good new is that the Oriental Graphica is a 
fairly attractive paper (for an RC) prints well in color, takes the 
K3 & K4 inks well (but not the older UC inks) has good Dmax (anyone 
care to measure it for the group?) and is available in both rolls 
and sheets up to 13 x 19. Guess I'll give it a whirl.

Steve Karafyllakis