Digital BW, The Print

Crane sent me a 24" roll of the Portfolo Rag back before it was 
officially realeased. Yes Jim carries it at shades of paper. I have to 
agree that it is a fine paper. I especially like it with the Cone NK7 
Carbon Sepia inkset. It is a "natural" paper with no oba content so it 
is not nearly as bright as Photorag or some of the Innova papers. To me 
that is a limitation for some things, but makes it ideal for others. 
And, unlike the Premier Art Hotpress, it doesn't do strange things with 
monochrome color, like cooling off. It has a very smooth surface, 
smoother than any of the others I have used except Premiere Art HP, and 
for small warm or neutral monochrome prints it can be quite beautiful 
indeed.

The only down sides I can see is the price, it ain't cheap, and the 
usual problem with the Crane matte papers, it doens't take blacks too 
well. In other words it needs to be carefully profiled or one will find 
the dmax actually reversing in the densest values, I did. Walker in 
Chicago also experienced this with his sample and we talked about it at 
PMA. You print out a first greyscale and you will measure the last 
patch reversing.We saw the same thing with MuseoMax. You need to back 
off the ink limit and your fine. With any rip such as qtr or studio 
print you would be fine.

I'll tell you anyone who is producing porfolios of detailed photo files 
in black and white and wants to print small images, it is really good 
for that with neutral or warm inks. I did some 4x5" tests with the Cone 
warm inks and they were so nice to look at and precious even at that 
tiny scale. It kind of made me want to do some really small things in 
someone's portfolio. I haven't done anything really big with it yet.

John



--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "mailbox@..." 
<bugnoir@...> wrote:
>
> Evan and all,
> 
> I have just discovered a wonderful paper, Crane's Museo Portfolio 
Rag. I bought a sample pack from Jim Doyle, then within the last two 
weeks, I bought two more boxes in different sizes. Jim is my favorite 
vendor. And this paper is  my new all time favorite.