gettingbetter
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A New Paper from Fuji
Printing in black and white is still the bane of digital photography. That beautiful image on screen prints flat and with annoying colour shifts. If you look at it under tungsten light you see red, under florescent you see ghastly greens or cyans. How many sepia toned prints are made just to avoid the whole mess?
Fuji have a new paper here in Japan.
How does it shape up? I bought a pack and this post is about making a first test print.
A short diversion here for the technically minded; the photograph used is a 6x6cm Ilford XP2 negative.
The photo editing software I use is Picture Windows Pro. 3.5.
The negative was scanned using an Epson GT-9800F scanner in 24 bit colour at a resolution of 1200 dpi.
The printer is an Epson PX-G930(A4) and the test print used the following setting:
super photo
ICM
Editing software had the printer profile set to:
None
Gammut set to Maintain Full Gammut.
O.K., on to the test.
I chose the negative because it has many light tones and a lot of detail. Diagram 1 shows a small field god in Kamou, southern Japan.
Diagram 1
Most scanned negatives need cleaning up and this is no exception. Diagram 2 shows the working image.
Diagram 2
Picture Windows makes a lot of use of masks. In this image I produced 3 masks for contrast control of highlights, mid tones and shadows. Diagram 4 shows the highlight mask used.
Diagram 3
I made 3 copies; one toned with 1.2& red, one toned 1.2% magenta and a version with a gamma of 1.8.
I put the 3 versions plus the original scanned image to fit on to one A4 sheet of paper. Diagram 4 shows this test print labeled to indicate which version is which.
Diagram 4
At last we at the moment of truth. The paper itself is a semi gloss with a slightly satin feel to it. Into the printer and lets see!
The last diagram shows the final test print.
Diagram 5
The version with a red tint of 1.2% looks most neutral on my white board in daylight.
If you saw any one of the prints separately I think you would consider them acceptable.
This paper is not cheap, but when you consider how much ink you can waste trying to correct annoying colour shifts in a supposedly black and white print I for one will be buying more.
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26/Jun/08, 2:03 am
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martinimages
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Re: A New Paper from Fuji
Although I partially agree with your comment, I feel its to wide, not all printouts are flat and have colour shift in different light temp, It all depends on your setup, paper profile, printer, if you print using dye based inks then you will see the effects, pigment inks do not respond to light the same, if you use the canned profiles, although there very good these days, custom ones give more neutral tones, my own work prints out nearly [albeit slightly lower contrast than viewed on LCD which is unavoidable, as there different, viewing systems, natural light as against back light, I do agree that printing on rag papers is difficult and would always advice that you stick to one paper you like and learn its characteristics working on your own system ,save the data for print output then you will know how to tweak to get the best from it, then move on to another paper and so on
Martin
Last edited by martinimages, 26/Jun/08, 11:20 am
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26/Jun/08, 11:18 am
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I Simonius
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Re: A New Paper from Fuji
images not showing up?
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Mac PPC Dual 2.3, 6GB Ram, LR2.5 , PsCS4 11.0.1, 5Dmk2 fw 1.1.0,
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8/Jul/08, 12:30 pm
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