A Look at Epson Papers and Profiles for the 2200

Note: The information in this review is very specific to the 2200 printer used together with the latest profiles from Epson America. If you use a different printer and/or different profiles you will get different results. Even prints from the Epson 4000 differ markedly in gamut and black point on these same Epson papers.

The name Epson will long have a special ring for those who do digital photography: with their patented piezo technology Epson pioneered the photo-quality inkjet printer, supplying a crucial piece of the digital darkroom puzzle. Epson advanced on two fronts: printers for both the home and for the professional market. The first generations of these printers provided photo-quality colour but with unit-to-unit variances that made matching input to output a dark art. Very expensive spectrophotometers and profiling software were required to tame the wild beast of Mr & Mrs Newlywed's flesh tones.

With the release of the 9600 & 7600 UltraChrome printers, Epson introduced a key element in overcoming this hurdle - when you shelled out for a 9600 or a 7600 you acquired a printer with almost negligible unit-to-unit variance. What's more, thanks to the generosity of Bill Atkinson, one could download free profiles for the entire line-up of Epson UltraChrome-compatible papers; and not just any profiles but superbly accurate profiles.

This was all very well if you could afford a 7600 or 9600. Those of us who opted for the lower priced and smaller 2100/2200 found ourselves in the same old bind of superb printer saddled with wretched out-of-the-box profiles. We assumed that the 2100/2200 was not built to the same factory tolerances as the 7600 and 9600, so that the discrepancies between monitor and print we were getting was due to unit-to-unit variance, not profile inadequacy. Then on January 20, 2004 Epson America posted a set of new profiles for use with their 2200 printer and the Epson-branded papers that are compatible with it. Rumour had it that these profiles were created using Bill Atkinson's techniques. Those who downloaded and installed the new profiles quickly saw that they were indeed day to the night of the previous Epson profiles. The 2200 proved to be exceptionally well engineered, after all.

I'm confining the scope of this review to the seven Epson-branded papers directly supported by the 2200's print driver. Alternatively, one might find that a paper by some other manufacturer is a close enough clone that it will work with one of the new profiles or that has accurate profiles available on the manufacturer's site (such as Hahnemühle). But the Epson line-up of papers, while perhaps not the least expensive, is high quality, well-matched to the UltraChrome ink set, and has known longevity (see Wilhelm Research).

Before jumping in to review the Epson-branded papers compatible with the 2200, I want to explore some of the underlying concepts and challenges that go into a sheet of inkjet paper. If you are impatient, skip ahead to page 3.

Matte vs. RC

There are two broad categories of inkjet paper: matte and resin-coated (RC). Epson refers to RC paper as photo paper; it’s a part of the same family of paper that the corner photo lab uses to print your vacation snaps. These papers have a glossy or semi-gloss finish that provides maximal contrast and vividness of hue but has the downside of reflecting light sources from a variety of viewing angles. Matte finished paper has no problem with reflectance but has reduced contrast and vividness, at least when used with pigment inks. This is the same dichotomy that painters have lived with for hundreds of years: oil paints on canvas versus watercolours on paper. Anyone looking to achieve the closest match between the range of hues and tonal values on a monitor and on the resulting print can simply ignore matte papers and choose whichever of the RC papers one prefers the finish of.

Simplistically, the RC papers are there for the reproduction of photographs, the matte papers are there for the reproduction of watercoloured originals, and the canvas is there for the reproduction of oil-painted originals. But of course it’s an essential element of human nature that if someone draws a line someone else will take it as a dare and cross over it. Photographers – or at least, art photographers – have been experimenting with matte finish papers just as long as they’ve been available.

Blackness

And that experimentation was reasonably successful back in the good old days of dye inks. However, those of us who have opted into the UltraChrome world of pigmented inks in pursuit of immortality (or simply to do well by one’s customers), have found that printing on matte is a whole new ball game. By far the biggest issue is that pigmented blacks on matte are no longer truely black but take a step in the direction of charcoal grey. The pursuit of blacker blacks has become the El Dorado for many of us and drove Epson to create a special black UC ink just for printing on matte finishes. Epson has also pursued the best matte paper coating for reproducing blacks as well as colours.

One aspect of this technology is the complex physics and chemistry of resin-coated pigments, another is the complex physics and chemistry of ceramic coatings, but a third aspect – that is rarely appreciated – is the very familiar physiology of human perception.

Take a look at your TV screen some time when the set is turned off. TV’s (and computer monitors) work by causing red, green, and blue phosphors to illuminate at various intensities. All other colours are created by mixing those three primary colours. White is a roughly equal mix of red, green, and blue light at maximum intensity. Shades of grey are also equal mixes of red, green, and blue, but at lesser intensities. Black, however, cannot be created by any mix of red, green, and blue. Instead, black on a TV or monitor is the absence of illumination – a region in which no phosphors are glowing.

It stands to reason, then, that the blackest black your TV can present will be the same colour you see when your TV is turned off - usually more of a dark grey than a true black. True TV and monitor blacks are created inside your brain to represent the contrast between a dark region and a strongly illuminated region. (Try it: simply turn off your monitor, note the colour of the screen, then turn your monitor back on, then note how much blacker the black margin on the left looks.)

The same thing happens on paper. Even though the true colour of a black ink on a given paper may be far lighter than perfect pitch black, small regions of black amid relatively light regions of white or colour, as in fig. 1, will appear much darker than a larger region of black, as in fig. 2.

Fig. 1. Darks amid lights

The practical effect of this is that blackness is not an issue even on matte paper unless there are large regions of black or near-black in the image.

Fig. 2. Dark shadow greens

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