Digital BW, The Print

Espen,

Technically, you can't achieve as high a dmax on matte papers with MK  
ink as you can with PK on RC or the newer glossy/satin fiber base  
papers.  A dmax of 1.7 to 1.8 seems to be the best I've seen reported  
for matte papers with MK, whereas 2 to 2.7+ is common for many PK  
papers.  If you present framed prints behind glass/plexi then there  
may be less visual difference in the apparent "depth" of the blacks -  
at least with ambient lighting.  Direct spot lighting would probably  
still favor the PK prints.  If you are working a lot with prints  
having large areas of 100% K, then the Hahnemuhle PhotoRag Satin  
would probably not be suitable.  Epson Velvet Fine Art is a matte  
paper that does seem to work well with prints having large black  
areas, at least with Epson MK ink and would be my recommendation for  
the type of prints you seem to want.

Carl Schofield
http://photos.schophoto.com




On Jan 14, 2008, at 5:29 PM, espen.aasheim wrote:

> Thanks Carl, I'll have to have a look at that paper.
>
> Do you think that I could get the blacker blacks while staying with
> 3mk (perhaps a smoother matte paper), or will the variance between
> other matte papers, and the Permajet paper (Delta Matt Fibre), be so
> subtle that I'd need to move to semi-gloss papers to get a noticable
> change in the appearance of pure black? Any other paper suggestions
> would be great too.
>
> ps: I tend to work with larger areas of black, and the darkest tones
> play an important role.
>
>
> thanks,
> espen
>
>>
>> Hahnemuhle Photorag Satin is the only MK paper that I know of that
>> has a "sheen". Dmax isn't outstanding, but it does look nice for
>> some images that don't have large areas of deep black.
>
>> Carl Schofield
>>
>


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