ink transfer tests with dual sided rag media
2005-02-26 by john dean
A couple of months ago we were discussing which dual sided rag papers would work best for book making in regard to surface stability and ink transfer. I had no idea at that time. I have done some serious tests with several dual sided papers and three coatings for them. My results now show that H. Photo Rag, Red River dual premium matte, and Epson dual heavyweight matte, even when sprayed with Premier Art, Lyson Printguard, and Lascaux print spray still show a tiny bit of ink transfer in the blackest of areas, even with 3 coats of these sprays. I left my prints under a 30 lb. weight for about two months facing an unprinted version of the same paper. Unsprayed versions of these papers transfer badly and prove unusable in this context. The sprays help tremendously with this situation but with carbon pigment prints with a lot of pure black areas there is still a very small amout of transfer with these papers. If you do not have a lot of pure black I don't think H. Photo Rag would show transfer, but many images do have pure blacks present. Coating with more than 3 coats reduces the dmax objectionably and is both expensive, time consuming, and seems to make no real difference. Lascaux spray has little reduction in dmax with more coats, but does tend to flatten out the texture of the media in my opinion with more than three coats because it has an acrylic base that can accumulate with too many coats. I didn't test any hand applied print laquers because anything thicker on the print surface will change the appearance of its surface in my opinion. The good news is that the new 100% rag paper, Premier Art Hot Press dual sided shows no ink transfer at all when sprayed with any of these sprays. Actually with this media there is almost no trasfer of the blacks even when not sprayed. When sprayed my cover sheets, that are a pure white rag paper, showed nothing at all, even under a heavy weight for 2 months. So, personally I will only use media that has the coating down in the paper, such as the Premier Art Hotpress ( also sold as Epson Ultrasmooth rag ) for high-end book projects. Somerset Velvet also has no transfer in this type of test but it is not available in dual sided sheets or roll. Hope this hepls. I know what I will be using for my books. Of course there are new papers coming online all the time. However, in my experience, most of the finest papers designed for exhibition purposes have surface coatings and may not be appropriate in a context where dual sided and in close proximity with facing pages. There are a couple of rc dual sided papers out there that I will be testing next for book usage. If anyone else has similar or conflicting test results I would love to hear about them. Best, John Dean