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Rangefinder Magazine
May 2003

Inkjet Printing Comes of Age by Ingrid S. Krampe
A Detailed Look at Products, Prices, and Features

Among the notables: Hahnemühle’s Chelsea portrays this pastel pink rose and vivid greens beautifully without losing the detail in the water droplets. At 210gsm this dense watercolor paper is similar to Arches.

I can still remember the excitement of watching black-and-white prints as they took shape in the developer pan in our wet darkroom. Things have changed. Most of the images we capture today are digital and we’ve gotten used to instantly previewing them on the camera’s LCD or the minute we download them to the laptop. The age of instant gratification is alive and well in our digital darkroom too, with many basic enhancements just a click away. If there was a missing link, it was the ability to put the digital images on paper in our studio in a manner that matched the uniformity of tone, density range, color saturation, texture, and longevity of silver halide.

Two years ago, the excitement returned with the introduction of the Epson Photo Stylus 2000P and its pigment-based inks. Making inkjet printing a viable photographic tool, it was the first inkjet printer capable of producing prints that rivaled both silver halide quality and archivability. Since then the technology for inkjet printing has grown exponentially along with the media available for the creative photographer. Other than a wide selection of gloss, luster, and matte surfaces, we found satins, metallics, watercolor, hand-milled art paper, sheer translucent, white film, canvas and even wall-paper.

Supporting Technology
There are two types of inkjet printers: thermal jet and piezo. In thermal jet printers, inks are heated by an electric element on the head of the cartridge, allowing the expanded inks to be propelled through a nozzle. Printers using the piezo method have the nozzles and heads installed on the printer instead of the cartridge. This tends to direct the ink with higher precision and produces less splatter.

An ultrafine ceramic particle coating ensures that Pictorico inks dry on contact. Check out the crisper dot definition this achieves in this image supplied by Pictorico.

The two primary ink types utilized for inkjet printing are pigment-based and dye- based inks. While pigment inks are known for their light-fastness and water-resistance, they could not compete with the dye-based inks because of their substantially wider color gamut, resulting in brighter more vivid colors.

Epson recently released the Photo Stylus 2200, which utilize a new series of proprietary Ultra Chrome inks, which (according to Epson) offer an amazing light-fastness rating of 80 years on Epson’s matte papers, and 44 years on their Premium Luster, Glossy, and Semigloss media. The kicker, however, is that Epson is also promising a wide color gamut similar to Epson’s vivid dye-based photo inks.

When shopping for new media for your printer there are a couple of things to look for. First, make sure that the media is optimized for the type of ink you are using. For example, the Ilford Galerie Classic line of inkjet paper is designed for dye-based inks, while their Galerie Smooth line is optimized for both.

Second, check out the coating on media. Coatings range from uncoated to gel, cast and resin-coated. While “gel” was one of the first coatings designed, you’ll find it is still available in some very fine media, including Bright Cube’s Xg Gloss, a unique gelatin coated and polyester-backed archival media designed to provide the rich color and saturation of Cibachrome.

	Manipulated to look like a pastel art work these golf carts sitting under a heavy cloud-covered sky were nicely reproduced on Hawk Mountain’s Kestrel paper, which is designed to have the look and feel of 140-pound cold press watercolor paper.

Cast-coated papers are run through a series of nickel-plated rollers to create a high quality, smooth flat surface. Red River has a collection of cast coated papers, including two different weighted (145 and 265 gsm) and well priced Frio Gloss papers and its TDY paper that is gloss on one side and matte on the other.

The most recent advances in gloss paper are the resin-coated papers, which provide an extremely smooth high-gloss finish. The advantage of resin-coated papers versus cast is that the ink is closer to the surface providing sharper detail and brighter colors. Also, look for some of the newer resin-coated papers that include ceramic particles that expedite drying time. One such paper is Ilford’s Galerie Smooth, which is compatible with both dye and pigment inks and will last up to 30 years when pigment inks are used. We worked with both Ilford’s Smooth and Classic Galerie surfaces and preferred the Smooth, because they were virtually dry by the time they came off of the printer. They also do not require custom settings to optimize print quality.

Pictorico, a division of AGA Chemicals, Inc. in Charlotte, North Carolina, also coats their inkjet media with a transparent layer of ultra-fine ceramic particles designed to form “regularly-shaped” pores. According to the company, the result is ultra-quick drying and a crisper dot definition and a “high degree of compatibility with virtually all desktop inkjet printers.”

	To adjust the resolution (dots-per-inch), go to the Mode options on the Print Screen. There will be three options, Auto, Photo Enhance, and Custom. To adjust dpi, click on the Custom setting on the Print Menu, and then click on the Advanced option. A Print Quality menu will appear with a (non-photo) 360 dpi fine setting and options for Photo ranging from 720- to 1440- to 2880 dpi.

We had been looking for good two-sided media for our studio for some time and we were rather pleased to find a variety of them on the market. Brightcube has several, including a Gloss, Satine, and Velvet finish. We were impressed with the variety of Duo print papers, Tetenal has to offer and checked out both the 150gsm glossy/
matte and 130gsm matte/matte. Red River Paper also has a selection available including a TDY Gloss/Matte and an absolutely lovely 45 lb. two-sided Zeppelin semi-gloss.

Inkjet Media
Using the Epson Stylus Photo 1280 printer (piezo) and its dye-based inks as the standard, we had the opportunity to check out quite a few different media in our studio with fair to excellent results. To avoid disappointment when working with new or different inkjet media, we recommend you follow the media manufacturer’s instructions. Many of the vendors include printing recommendations for a variety of the photo-quality inkjet printers on the market, or even provide a downloadable profile designed for specific media. If neither is available, we recommend you adjust both dpi and ink disbursement until you achieve the desired results.

Although the new Epson Stylus Photo 2200 has ink-disbursement controls, the only way to adjust the amount of ink with the Epson Stylus Photo 1280 is by changing the media setting. According to Epson the ink-disbursement (smallest to greatest) is as follows: Plain, Premium Bright White Paper, Photo Quality Ink Jet Paper, ColorLife, Glossy Film, Matte Paper Heavy-weight, Premium Photo papers, and Glossy Photo Paper. You can change the setting in the Print menu.

To adjust the resolution (dots-per-inch), go to the Mode options on the Print Screen. There will be three options, Auto, Photo Enhance, and Custom. If you select Photo Enhance, the menu will provide options such as Standard, People, Nature, Soft-Focus, Sepia, and Digital Camera Correction. To select dpi, bypass Photo Enhance and select the Custom setting. Then click on the Advanced option, and a Print Quality menu will appear with a (non-photo) 360 dpi fine setting and options for Photo ranging from 720- to 1440- to 2880 dpi.

We found that some media, such as the Konica papers, responded best to low-ink disbursement (the Glossy film setting) and high (2880 dpi), while others had less issues with pooling and repelling by using a lower dpi setting. We highly recommend that you add one new paper at a time to your repertoire, taking the time to test the media for optimum results with your printer. The process can be frustrating and the range of results that are achieved with the same printer at different settings is phenomenal.

Ingrid S. Krampe is a writer and photographer from Jefferson, Georgia. She is the proprietor of Real Bytes Imaging (www.realbytesimaging.com). She can be reached by email at: daswerk@earthlink.net.