Digital BW, The Print

Hello:

A review of Arches Infinity Standard and Natural White papers by me and 
Harald Johnson is available at the following link:

http://www.dpandi.com/newsreviews/reviews/ai/index.html

All the best!

Andrew Darlow


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I'm less and less inclined to get into differences of opinion on the
internet these days, but with this I'll make an exception. The
announcement of this review has been cross posted on every Epson
related list I am on, that and the fact that my tests with the paper
were less than stunning move me to respond.
Considering the high price of this stuff, some alternate views are
needed.
This paper has some eccentricities. The way it takes ink reminds me
very much of some papers I've tried that have gelatin coatings like a
long gone paper from Bulldog (interestingly call PhotoRag if I
recall), Oce watercolor paper (sold under different names different
places), and Luminos Charcoal R.
This coating takes ink slowing, so it stays wet on the surface of the
paper longer than coatings used by most other papers. This has several
consequences.
Firstly, you may have pizza wheel tracks since areas of high ink load
will be very puddled on the surface as the paper moves under the
wheels.
When the ink dries on the surface (rather than absorbed), high ink
load areas have a different reflective quality than the rest of the
paper. So blacks or near blacks will only appear their deepest under
the right lighting, it's related to the bronzing effect others refer
to with glossy papers.
It has a definite ink load limit, beyond which you will get mottle,
bleed, possible pizza wheel tracks and the above mentioned effect.
Compared to the Hahnemühle line of papers, which are still the
ones to
beat in terms of objective performance in the art paper category, it
displays a lower Dmax and gamut.
All of that said, the Dmax and gamut are not bad compared to something
like Museo. It also presents the subtle hues of quad sets differently,
another quality I've seen in papers with unusual coatings. For color
you will definitely need good profiles, I've tried the Nash 9600
profiles on Arches' site, and found some problems. It moves the warmer
quad inks to a more uniformly neutral hue, I haven't tried something
like the Selenium inks with it.
I haven't tested, but I'll bet this paper takes dyes better than pigments.
BUT-
It will produce beautiful prints. Since it has a nice surface and
color, there are images that look very nice on it if the qualities
they require fall within the paper's abilities.
In the category of coated fine art inkjet papers, there are others
less expensive that perform better under all circumstances.
I strongly suggest that, considering it's expense, you find some
samples and do some tests. If your particular images sing on it and
nothing else, and you are a trust fund kid, you're good.
I wish there were more options, but the Hahnemühle papers remain
(unfortunately) the papers to beat for all around performance in this
category of papers that I have tried. I don't have a lot of test
numbers to report since I don't write articles. Steve Meyers and I
fooled with it enough for me to know it's not going to work for me so
testing stopped. Life is short.
I should add that after seeing a few samples of the paper, I was very
excited to try it. That was before the price was announced of course.
Tyler

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, shashinka@a...
wrote:
> Hello:
>
> A review of Arches Infinity Standard and Natural White papers by me
and

> Harald Johnson is available at the following link:
>
> http://www.dpandi.com/newsreviews/reviews/ai/index.html
>
> All the best!
>
> Andrew Darlow

since we're talking about the arches paper here is my
evaluation after working with it for some time now.

good:
great feel, weight and texture, the hefty weight
(250gsm) and stiff construction gets rid of curl and
buckling

i like the slightly warm base, its not concord rag
warm, but is is a natural color, the lack of oba's
soothes my mind-just my own personal hang up

it prints very smoothly with UC inks on a 2200

doesn't flake, so far

i had a profile made by cathy stratton and the color
gamut and accuracy is great, my print moniter match is
very very close (i use a LaCie electron blue iv
calibrated with monaco ez color and sensor)

bad:
way too expensive, but that is a problem with many
higher end papers

my quad b&w printing with MIS VM is inconsistant, my
tones have a notable eggplantish color shift, not
terrible, not what i like either. i just switched to
ultratones and have not tried that yet. for quads i
have had much better luck with hahnemuhle, hawk
mountain and museum digital art papers. (unfortunately
museum flakes too much)

like tyler said, it can build up denstity in the
blacks that appears to sit on the surface of the
paper, it usually doesn't but it can, when it does
there is some bronzing like characteristics, nothing
like ultrachromes on glossy papers but still not
desirable. i am going to try dialing back the ink
coverage a bit on my few troublesome images to see if
that corrects things.

without profiling the paper it can be a little tough
to get right, the arches canned profile is okay but it
is a snick green and it plugs shadows. my custom
profile appears to have fixed this problem. other
profiles like lepp or my own monaco quick profiles or
a random eem profile are a mess (plugged shadows, too
much ink build up)

it also smells bad when it first comes out of the box,
that goes away after a bit though

so sorry if i rambled, just thought i'd share my
experiences with the paper. i use it for color images
i really really like. for quads its not my first
choice by any means. i am going to try the entrada
natural finish paper here shortly and see where that
leads. the price and early reports are encouraging.

john eckenrode 






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> I'm less and less inclined to get into differences of opinion on the
> internet these days, but with this I'll make an exception. The
> announcement of this review has been cross posted on every Epson
> related list I am on, that and the fact that my tests with the paper
> were less than stunning move me to respond.
> Considering the high price of this stuff, some alternate views are
> needed...
> snip
> 
> Tyler
> 
Hi Tyler:

Thank you for your comments from personal experience.   I think I covered 
some of the shortcomings you mentioned by ink laydown in the shadow areas, and I 
saw them primarily with the textured 355gsm version with a heavy ink load. 
Harald's prints on a 1280 with OEM dyes didn't exhibit any pizza wheels, and I 
tested the Ultrachromes on a 7600 so I only had the roller mark problem when 
trying to print the back of the sheet, which I mentioned in the review.

I also didn't print with any quadtones, but the Ultrachrome OEM's through 
Imageprint's BW profiles rendered very nicely to my eye, as did black ink only 
printing.

The cost is of course an issue, but the 17x22 pricing wasn't bad in my 
opinion(about $6 street cost for the 230gsm sheets). 

All the best!

Andrew Darlow


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