Digital BW, The Print

Have you tried Photorag Satin which is designed to work with MK inks?  I
quite like it with some images.  Its not glossy by any means but does have a
slight sheen to it.

 

David Whistance



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

<david.whistance@...> wrote:
>
> Have you tried Photorag Satin which is designed to work with MK inks?  

Have not used that particular paper. Does it produce a good result?

I do use the Hahn Photorag Pearl with MK using an over-coating. This is my favourite paper as I tend not to frame prints and am not so keen on matt papers not framed under glass. Paul very generously has provided a 3MK set of curves for this paper for use with the R1800 (and quite possibly for other printers, I don't know).

Have used Hahn and Fotospeed sprays to over-coat (nice results but truly toxic substances which need to be treated with great respect), second pass GO (OK but susceptible to banding and track marks) and recently have been trying out coating with photo-grade gelatin. 

Early days yet but gelatin shows great promise, both for inkjet coated papers and watercolour papers. Very benign substance (benefits from a few drops of photoflo), lovely flexible material to work with and provides a beautiful tactile surface, inexpensive. Very familiar to the silver gelatin print generation! Need to find a way of applying the coating evenly to discourage curling and also to see what its long term archival properties are.

Hi,  I've had very good results with Photorag Satin and like the surface
very much - its quite susceptible to scratching though.  Your gelatine
experiments sound interesting, how are you applying it?  If you do a search
on the forum you will see posts from Mantinieri on a similar subject
although he is printing on uncoated fine art paper with his own formulation
of inks.

 

David Whistance

From: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
hp9180profile
Sent: 10 November 2010 14:06
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: Satin Paper to use with MK ink

 

  



<david.whistance@...> wrote:
>
> Have you tried Photorag Satin which is designed to work with MK inks? 

Have not used that particular paper. Does it produce a good result?

I do use the Hahn Photorag Pearl with MK using an over-coating. This is my
favourite paper as I tend not to frame prints and am not so keen on matt
papers not framed under glass. Paul very generously has provided a 3MK set
of curves for this paper for use with the R1800 (and quite possibly for
other printers, I don't know).

Have used Hahn and Fotospeed sprays to over-coat (nice results but truly
toxic substances which need to be treated with great respect), second pass
GO (OK but susceptible to banding and track marks) and recently have been
trying out coating with photo-grade gelatin. 

Early days yet but gelatin shows great promise, both for inkjet coated
papers and watercolour papers. Very benign substance (benefits from a few
drops of photoflo), lovely flexible material to work with and provides a
beautiful tactile surface, inexpensive. Very familiar to the silver gelatin
print generation! Need to find a way of applying the coating evenly to
discourage curling and also to see what its long term archival properties
are. 





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I have been using the Epson OEM Gloss Black with 3K printing in an R1800 with good results.  I change the chips, and mounting tabs on the two other channels.  I am getting great results on Silver Rag, and Epson Exhibition Papers.

I do get a slight bronzing, and a gloss differentrial, but reduce these by waxing the final print with commercial quality Pledge.

Since it is easy to switch back and forth with the R1800, I have a set of OEM inks for Matte, and glossy.  It only takes minutes to switch and waste only one reload cycle of inks. 

I sometimes use MIS Ebony, but do not make enough B&W prints to keep it from clogging.  I do not get clogs with the OEM inks.  I reload the original Epson cartridges by resetting the chips and drilling a fill, and a vent hole in the top of the cartridges.  These holes need to be drilled in the right places, and a tube inserted through the double wall on the top.

Ben

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "ben" <benjschneider2@...> wrote:
>
> I have been using the Epson OEM Gloss Black with 3K printing in an R1800 with good results.  I change the chips, and mounting tabs on the two other channels.  I am getting great results on Silver Rag, and Epson Exhibition Papers.
> 
> I do get a slight bronzing, and a gloss differentrial, but reduce these by waxing the final print with commercial quality Pledge.
> 
> Since it is easy to switch back and forth with the R1800, I have a set of OEM inks for Matte, and glossy.  It only takes minutes to switch and waste only one reload cycle of inks. 
> 
> I sometimes use MIS Ebony, but do not make enough B&W prints to keep it from clogging.  I do not get clogs with the OEM inks.  I reload the original Epson cartridges by resetting the chips and drilling a fill, and a vent hole in the top of the cartridges.  These holes need to be drilled in the right places, and a tube inserted through the double wall on the top.
> 
> Ben
>

In response to this post and a direct email enquiry arising from my original post:

I have only just started experimenting with gelatin myself. I am based in the UK and buy it from here (London):

http://www.silverprint.co.uk/ProductByGroup.asp?PrGrp=49&sort_dir=0-0-0&sort_column=7-8-0&Start=50

You need to find a pure photographic gelatin, preferably with a bloom number of 250 or larger. 

It is very easy to work with. Initially I have been imersing the paper in a tray of dissolved gelatin but am moving onto using brushing and rolling it. The big issue I am up against is paper curl and am currently figuring out how to add the coating and dry it while keeping the paper flat. I do not think it is insurmountable; just need to keep trying different techniques. At the moment I am experimenting using it with uncoated watercolour papers.

Before starting down the gelatin route (in fact this is still my current method) I am using an R1800 loaded with 3MK (eboni) and full colour inkset. I print onto Hahn Photo Rag Pearl which in my opinion is a fantastic paper (have compared it with their later baryta papers and still come back to it). I then spray with Hahn spray and from this get a print I am very happy with, colour and BW work. I use MIS colour inks as well as their eboni. I have tried overcoating with GO but did not like it nearly as much. The only downside is that I sometimes get banding in certain tonal ranges which drives me mad. I think this is an issue with the R1800 when using MIS inks (does not arise with OEM inks, at least not on my printer). No bronzing or GD though. 

I am now trying gelatin as it is very cheap and unlike the hahn spray is non-toxic. I also want to mess around some more with good watercolour papers as I find these to be very attractive papers to my eye. I also would like to see whether they can be improved for inkjet applications with a further gelatin size prior to printing. Most of the hot pressed varieties of these papers are sized already but I have a hunch a little heavier sizing might be beneficial for inkjet printing. 

Alistair