Matte Paper

[Shadowman]

Anyone use and/or have any love for single weight matte paper? I purchased a package of High Quality Ink Jet Paper thinking it was glossy but it is actually matte paper. PN S041111, Epson, its actually 4.7mil but closest identical paper profile I could find was single weight 5mil, both have similar opacity (94%) and ISO brightness (90), the description for the single weight paper states it is suitable for promotional pieces, comps, professional layouts, indoor signage, proofs, displays, and posters. Usually my printer (Epson P5000) will distinguish between matte and glossy and if the inkset isn't correct I'll get a warning message, but this particular paper can be printed with photo or matte black inks.

Additional info, black and white images come out dull looking, color images look vivid depending on the light/exposure at time of capture; sunny scenes look good.

[James G]

John, I am 'fond' of a matte paper (Permajet Matte Plus) which I use a lot for my stained glass imagery. I actually profile papers myself using a SpyderPrint system.
Comparison with the print profiles provided by the manufacturer are for most purposes perfectly adequate, provided I am printing to the appropriate recommended paper setting, eg Epson Archival Matt, and my results are ok.

I have produced my own profiles using say, a paper setting for a gloss paper rather than matte and achieved 'reasonable' results. But in general this has been an experimental process when I was testing papers not designed for inkjet (my rather amateurish ventures ito 'fine art printing using non standard media )

I suspect that your prints coming out duller relates to your screen brightness and generating a test print appying a compensating brightness layer to the print version would help resolve the B/W print issue,

As regards the colour imige and variances in vividness, I think this is down to the way ink is dropped according to paper type. Since this is detemined by the profile you are using I would query if you changed the paper profile from matte to gloss to reflect the media type?

On my printer (Epson P600) I will only get a media warning about inkset if it is a paper loading issue, ie needs to be 'front loaded' because of paper thickness, otherwise I'm just notified that the printer is switching from Photo to Matte or vice versa.

I can't be sure, but are you certain it is the vibrance of your colours that is changing rather than overall brightness? If not, it may be that running a test print with an increased brightness (as for the B/W images) may actually be a solution.

[Shadowman]

John, I am 'fond' of a matte paper (Permajet Matte Plus) which I use a lot for my stained glass imagery. I actually profile papers myself using a SpyderPrint system.
Comparison with the print profiles provided by the manufacturer are for most purposes perfectly adequate, provided I am printing to the appropriate recommended paper setting, eg Epson Archival Matt, and my results are ok.

I have produced my own profiles using say, a paper setting for a gloss paper rather than matte and achieved 'reasonable' results. But in general this has been an experimental process when I was testing papers not designed for inkjet (my rather amateurish ventures ito 'fine art printing using non standard media )

I suspect that your prints coming out duller relates to your screen brightness and generating a test print appying a compensating brightness layer to the print version would help resolve the B/W print issue,

As regards the colour imige and variances in vividness, I think this is down to the way ink is dropped according to paper type. Since this is detemined by the profile you are using I would query if you changed the paper profile from matte to gloss to reflect the media type?

On my printer (Epson P600) I will only get a media warning about inkset if it is a paper loading issue, ie needs to be 'front loaded' because of paper thickness, otherwise I'm just notified that the printer is switching from Photo to Matte or vice versa.

I can't be sure, but are you certain it is the vibrance of your colours that is changing rather than overall brightness? If not, it may be that running a test print with an increased brightness (as for the B/W images) may actually be a solution.

Hi James,

I think I can mostly rule out monitor brightness as images printed on Canson Etching Rag come out fine, very good blacks and excellent contrast. I only have issues when printing on this particular paper and also Epson presentation matte, I haven't tried any of the high quality matte Epson papers yet, Moab and Canson matte looks fine. Regarding the color prints my comments on vividness really relate to how black and white prints look on the same paper compared to color prints, the B & W look dull and the color looks as if printed on glossy; I think I would get similar look if same image were laid side by side glossy/matte. I might try your suggestion of applying a brightness layer to the print to see if there's a difference.

[Shadowman]

I think I've found the issue I'm having with this paper, I did a search for indoor signage images and almost all were backlit, I placed the dull looking image on a light box and the image had decent contrast.

[James G]

Interesting... I had not really considered the idea of a paper being backlit before. I am going to have to follow up on this a bit more. As I said in my initial response, I use matte papers for my Stained Glass imagery. I have on occasion tried printing to transparent media (Acetate etc) but in general found it unsatisfactory. Basically I could not achieve sufficient colour density to realistically reproduce the transmitted light effect.

Using a paper which allows some transmission through the medium provides some interesting possibillites.

I've tried to find the Epson paper you purchased but I'm getting nothing that matches the item code you included in your first post. Is there any other descriptor I could use to search for it?

James

[Shadowman]

James,

Here is a link for the paper.

https://www.amazon.com/Epson-EPSS041...y+inkjet+paper

[Manfred M]

John - the issue you have is that this is not a photo paper, so Epson has not created any ICC profiles for it.

Short of getting the hardware / software to make your own profile or having a third party create a profile for you, you are out of luck and will have to find a work around yourself. It is doubtful that any of the other Epson profiles will work properly with this paper. As it is a matte paper, you should be using matte black, not photo black ink with it.

[Shadowman]

John - the issue you have is that this is not a photo paper, so Epson has not created any ICC profiles for it.

Short of getting the hardware / software to make your own profile or having a third party create a profile for you, you are out of luck and will have to find a work around yourself. It is doubtful that any of the other Epson profiles will work properly with this paper. As it is a matte paper, you should be using matte black, not photo black ink with it.

Hi Manfred,

I am using Matte black now but when I first tried out the paper I thought it was a glossy version and printed with photo black, I didn't like the results and did a bit of research on the paper finding out it was actually matte. Results still were not to my liking so I found a profile (single weight) which was very close in properties, still black and white images did not meet my tastes but color images did. Yes, I've run into a few papers which didn't have profiles available, I usually find some other use for the paper.

[Manfred M]

Hi Manfred,

I am using Matte black now but when I first tried out the paper I thought it was a glossy version and printed with photo black, I didn't like the results and did a bit of research on the paper finding out it was actually matte. Results still were not to my liking so I found a profile (single weight) which was very close in properties, still black and white images did not meet my tastes but color images did. Yes, I've run into a few papers which didn't have profiles available, I usually find some other use for the paper.

I understood all that John. All I was trying to say is that you should be looking at something more than the thickness and surface finish of the paper to judge the results. The papers you are looking at are "commodity" papers and the specs will be far more loose than for photo papers. Higher end photo papers may not contain wood products (lignin) and lower quantities of fillers like chalk and clay, so the way they absorb ink and reflect light will be quite different from commodity papers.

Sometimes one can find two different papers from the same manufacturer with characteristics that are similar enough, but it is rare in my experience.

[Shadowman]

I understood all that John. All I was trying to say is that you should be looking at something more than the thickness and surface finish of the paper to judge the results. The papers you are looking at are "commodity" papers and the specs will be far more loose than for photo papers. Higher end photo papers may not contain wood products (lignin) and lower quantities of fillers like chalk and clay, so the way they absorb ink and reflect light will be quite different from commodity papers.

Sometimes one can find two different papers from the same manufacturer with characteristics that are similar enough, but it is rare in my experience.

Manfred,

I get it now, what led me further on this quest was that I have profiles for Epson presentation matte paper and get the same results that I did with this particular product, I'll just stick with my other matte papers and use the remaining SO41111 product for text prints only. Thanks for the feedback.