Digital BW, The Print

Can I also assume now that I should use the Ultrasmooth media setting
when profiling the Photo Rag paper using a Spyder3 calibration device ? 

Rgds
Rick

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "rickbehl"
<RickBehl@...> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
> 
> Apologies if you see this message twice as I'm not sure if it got lost
> in the ether the first time I hit Send :-)
> 
> Anyways, I have completed my measurements on my testing of the various
> media settings on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag when printing from an Epson
3800. 
> 
> In summary I printed the darkest 20 steps from a 100 Step wedge on
> Photo Rag (308g) using the following Media settings in the Epson
> printer driver:
> 
> i) Velvet Fine Art (VFA)
> ii) Ultrasmooth (US)
> iii) Watercolor Radiant White (WCRW)
> iv) Velvet Fine Art with -5 Colour Density (VFA-5) as suggested on
> another website
> v) Enhanced Matte (EEM)
> 
> I am enclosing a link to a graph of the results:
> http://www.rickbehl.com/Photography/Printing/HPR308_MediaTest.jpg
> 
> Results summary:
> i) All the media settings show reasonable linearity in the printing of
> the step wedges up to about step 92. This is where the real blacks
> start to kick in...
> ii) Strangely with the exception of WCRW all the other prints show a
> reversal in the last (darkest) couple of steps (98-100). For example,
> on Ultrasmooth Step 98 printed at a Dmax of 1.563 but only 1.54 at
> Step 100 (ie lighter) ? I wasn't expecting this. For all media
> setttings I took 3 readings of each wedge and averaged them out to
> exclude any errors. Can anyone help to explain ?
> iii) In looking at the darkest 5 steps (95-100) it seems that there is
> not much variation in Dmax in VFA, EEM and VFA-5
> 
> Conclusion:
> From what I can see it looks like Ultrasmooth is the winner in terms
> of getting a reasonable max Dmax while showing reasonable linearity as
> much as possible all the way through the darker blacks. I believe this
> ties up with Igor's results earlier. 
> 
> Post-Conclusion:
> After this test I then printed a black and white test strip image from
> the northlight images site:
>
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/black_and_white_test.html
> 
> I printed using the best 3 settings from the first test (WCRW, VFA and
> US). The result seems to confirm the Step readings in that Ultrasmooth
> was overall the best print with good detail in the walls of the ruins
> in the image and good shadow detail. Strangely the VFA media setting
> results in a greenish cast (to my eye) and some overinking/smudging on
> the wall details... 
> 
> I have not tried Igor's shadow/highlight settings yet to see whether
> they can further improve the image but hopefully I'll get round to
> that soon !
> 
> Rgds
> Rick
>