Ilford Smooth Pearl Inkjet paper
2003-01-23 by sceptre12345 <am1000@videotron.ca>
Hi, I recently bought a sample pack of Ilford Galerie inkjet paper because one paper I wanted to try is Smooth Pearl Paper. So I made two prints with Epson Enhanced Matt paper (Piezo driver, MIS-FSN, EAM ICQ setting) and the same two prints on Ilford Smooth Pearl paper (Piezo driver, MIS-FSN, Epson Premium Luster ICQ setting). Much to my suprise, the prints from the two papers were almost identical. I handed the prints to three differents people and asked them to pick the prints they liked most. All of them picked the Ilford paper for about the same reason: it looks and feels like photographic paper while the Epson EEM looked matt. One person even said that prints made on EEM looked more like photocopies. Ouch! Next I asked them to do the same, but at a distance of three feet without touching the prints. Much to my surprise, none could see any difference between the two papers. While this Ilford paper looks more like photographic paper it has two important strikes against it: there is apparent bronzing under fluorescent lighting and much less so under incadescent lighting even though none of the three people saw it. And it did not pass the wet thumb rub test. So I'm still looking to find a reasonable cost alternative to EEM. Any suggestions? Cheers, Andre