Digital BW, The Print

Bad News About Alise Natural - it flakes badly.  Just a little while ago I began to sleeve up six prints to be mailed in the morning as the first installment of prints for a family reunion portrait job.  Three of the prints had from one to three tiny flakes, all in black or nearly black areas. 

So I got out my spotting pens (the Faber-Castell gray scale pigment ink artists pens) but found to my dismay that the paper wouldn't accept the ink.  Instead of going into the white spot, the ink got pulled into the edges around the spot, leaving a darker ring around it and making it worse.  Three prints ruined.

I am sorely disappointed because I really like this paper, but I can't afford to lose 50% of my prints to flakes.  Not only that, but I'm concerned what might happen to the others after they're delivered to the customer.  In hindsight, it seems foolish to do a commercial job and stake my reputation with an unproven paper, but I just assumed it would be fine.  A good lesson about assumptions.   

I am now beginning to reprint all six (and will do the rest of the job) on VFA, my tried and true workhorse paper.  It doesn't flake much (maybe 1 in 20 prints), and when it does, the spotting pens work beautifully.  Lesson learned.  

Good thing I only bought one box of Alise.  It's less expensive, but maybe this is a case of "you get what you pay for".

If anyone else is using this paper, please post your experiences here and let's see if other flaking reports come in (or anything else).  We also need to find out if other spotting methods will work.

Note: these prints were made using K3 inks.  Maybe other inks will be better...just a thought

Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm
I-Trak 2.1   http://www.cjcom.net/itrak.htm