A look at Moab matte papers for the Epson 4000

Note: my best guess is that this review also applies to the wide format Epson K3 printers: the 4800, 7800, and 9800.

In spite of the fact that the Epson 4000 uses the same UltraChrome inks as its predecessors it has been re-engineered from the ground up with a more linear driver and correspondingly larger gamut. Consequently, any expectations you may have from experience with a previous Epson printer as to how it will perform on a given paper and the 4000 are not likely to be fulfilled. Humble ol' Epson Enhanced Matte (EEM), for example, together with the supplied profile produces images that are often hard to distinguish from the same images printed on RC/photo paper, such as Premium Luster. For those who are into matte prints, EEM is serviceable but is too thin and textureless to pass muster for fine art printing. With a 2200 I was happy to use two other Epson papers: Velvet Fine Art and Watercolor Radiant White, but both are presently limited to a maximum 13x19" size.

Non-Epson papers are hard to come by up here in the Canadian hinterlands, my original predeliction had been to use the renowned Hahnemühle products, but naturally these have no Canadian distributor at present. One line that is available (from Vistek) is Moab, which has been well-received by those who post on the Internet. There are three Moab matte papers: Entrada Natural, Entrada Bright White, and Kayenta Photo Matte. The Entradas are 100% cotton (always a good thing ;); the Kayenta is lignen-free wood pulp.

Fig 1. Moab Letter-size sampler

If first impressions count, Moab impresses with the generosity of its packaging. Smaller size papers come in true cardboard boxes with side walls and nested top and bottom, like expensive stationery; the 17x22 sheets come in a heavy duty corrugated cardboard box, also with side walls (but not nested top and bottom). Inside the contents are clearly hand-packed (which I deduce from the short strips of cellophane tape used to seal the clear plastic bag containg the paper). Further: all paper types are double-sided. This not only eliminates the usual concern of which side is coated; not only allows for the use of both sides in album or book printng; but it's also great for proofing, since each sheet does double duty. Small company goodness.

Another aspect of first impressions, as trivial as it may seem, are the names of these papers. If you have any familiarity with the hoighty-toighty world of galleries and painting, you know that using a paper with a name like Fuji Crystal Archive or Epson UltraSmooth is already a strike against you. Words like Moab, Entrada, and Kayenta sound like art papers to this segment of the customer base, which helps just that little bit to erase the prejudicial distinction between painted art and inkjet art.

Fig 2. Sampler swatches: two each Entrada Bright White, Kayenta, Entrada Natural

Entrada Fine Art Natural

This paper has no optical brighteners and so is cream coloured rather than true white. The cream is lighter than Concorde Rag; and a tad darker than Velvet Fine Art, German Etching, and Somerset Velvet. To me it's the exact colour of French Vanilla ice cream. The texture differs between the 190 and 300 weights. The 190 paper is very restrained, having less texture than a velvet paper, but enough to distinguish it from a smooth bond; the 300 weight paper is approximately a velvet, rather similar to Watercolour - Radiant White in texture. The 190 paper is about as stiff as Watercolour - Radiant White; I don't find it at all too flimsy (as is Enhanced Matte) for 17" prints and love being able to load it in the paper tray.

I know little about paper making, but from what I've read there are two basic styles of inkjet matte coatings. One style, typified by Somerset Velvet PE and Concord Rag, uses a coating that soaks into the paper and so has a somewhat limited gamut and Dmax, but is fairly scuff and flake resistant. The other style keeps the coating on the surface and so has more gamut and Dmax, but scuffs and flakes more readily. The Moab papers, like Epson and Hahnemuhle, seem to be of the second variety. Moab talks about multiple receptive coatings; sounds good.

Fig 3. Bright White vs. Natural White

Entrada Fine Art Bright White

This paper is the same base paper as the Natural, but the colour is the nearly pure white of photocopy paper, Enhanced Matte, etc., with just the slightest cream tint. IOW: optical brighteners and bleaching. Because OBAs fade over time and therefore affect longevity, my preference would be to reserve Bright White for those few images that are unacceptably dingified by the yellow tint of the Natural.

Kayenta Photo Matte

This is a less-expensive, 205 gsm wood-pulp based paper with a pure cool white and textureless matte surface. Because it is acid and lignin free it should have excellent longevity. Essentially, it's a slightly stiffer version of Enhanced Matte and is actually just slightly whiter. Rag paper has the reputation for greater longevity than wood pulp, but Wilhelm Institute testing doesn't seem to bear this out (look at the numbers for Watercolor - Radiant White vs. UltraSmooth and Somerset Velvet, for example).

Colour-handling details

If you are thinking of ordering a paper, it's hard to get a feel for its properties when the reviewer uses nothing but words. To try for more objective data, I modified a test chart created by Bill Atkinson then printed it on several papers with all colour management disabled both in Photoshop and the print driver, just as I would for creating profiling swatches. This by-passes the question of whether the colours I'm seeing come from the paper or the profile, giving me at least some sort of take on how the paper itself responds to UltraChrome inks.

Fig 4. Expanded Bill Atkinson test chart (click for full version)

I examined the resulting printouts multiple times in bright indirect daylight. The colours in the third, fourth, and fifth rows were so nearly identical as to be indistinguishable to my eyes. The only differences in the last two rows is the cream tint imparted by Entrada Natural and to a lesser degree Watercolor - Radiant White. For the first two rows I assigned a 10 to the best performer - meaning the most saturated version of that colour - and a proportionally reduced score to the other papers for each cell. Thus a 9 indicates a colour that is slightly duller/desaturated compared to a 10:

Paper Black Dark red Dark yel Dark grn Dark cya Dark blu Dark mag Mid red Mid yel Mid grn Mid cya Mid blu Mid mag

EPL 10 10 9 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10

VFA & HGE 9 9 10 10 10 9 10 9.5 10 9 10 10 9

EEM 10 8 8.5 8 9 8 9 9 10 8.5 10 9 9

EFAN 9 8 8 9 9.5 8 9 9 10 8.5 10 9 9

EFAB 8 9 9 10 10 9 10 8 10 8.5 10 9 9

WRW 7 8 10 8 9.5 9 8.5 9 10 9 10 10 10

KPM 9 7 8 8 9 8 7 6 10 7 8 8 6

STPE 6 7 8 5 9.5 8 8 9 10 9 10 9 9

For perspective I threw in as many other papers as I had available. EPL = Epson Premium Luster; HGE = Hahnemühle German Etching; STPE = Somerset Textured Photo Enhanced. I included PL as sort of the gold standard, since RC papers will usually outperform matte papers in saturation. German Etching proved so similar in colour performance to Epson's Velvet Fine Art (and therefore Epson Textured Fine Art) that I could not tell them apart - very different texture so these are not the same paper rebranded, but the coating and rag content must be virtually identical. STPE will perform identically to Somerset Velvet PE; both are the same substrate and same coating with different textures.

Please remember that these numbers apply to the extremes of pure red, yellow, etc. Pastel hues would be a 10 in every case, except where the yellowness of an off-white paper intrudes in the very palest hues. So images with a muted palette would print well on most any paper. The reason for these numbers is to help pin down how these papers will handle the most challenging colours we can throw at them: the dark saturated colours. Based on an extensive number of landscape prints, including fall colour and deep shadows, I find any number of 8 or higher to be excellent; I flagged the 7s and lower because these start to impose significant limits on which images I can print. The exception to this is pure black: I find any loss of pure black to be problematic.

Longevity

Lacking Wilhelm Institute tests, we haven't any "official" assurance of longevity, but the 100% cotton base plus the close similarity to Epson coating suggests we can expect something similar to UltraSmooth's longevity numbers for Entrada Natural and something similar to Velvet Fine Art's longevity numbers for Entrada Bright White. I always apply PremierArt Print Shield UV spray to final matte prints for good luck.

Downloadable profiles

Moab, as has become SOP, offers free downloadable profiles for the most common art printers. As a further, delightful touch they also recommend several custom profile makers by name.

Fig 5a. Moab profile

Fig 5b. EEM profile

Having read that the downloadable profiles on Moab's web site were excellent, I used the Entrada profiles for my first test prints of a difficult image with lots of blacks, shadows, and rich yellows and reds. The blacks were cloudy, the shadows choked up, and the gamut clipped (Fig 3). A few more tests and permutations produced no joy, leaving me ready for the long drive back to the supplier to exchange the unopened box of 17x22. Eventually, in desperation, I hit on the idea of trying the Enhanced Matte profile that came with the 4000 - bingo! Entrada Natural prints, using the EEM profile and taking into account the paper colour difference, are such a close match to EEM itself that it's hard to tell the two apart (Fig 5a & 5b). Colours and gamut are identical; the darkest parts of shadows are just slightly blocked up compared to EEM, and of course the off-white of the paper means that the palest tints will be shaded to yellow instead of pure (Fig 3).

Remember that my results with the downloadable SP 4000 profiles may not be your results, so be sure to try them yourself. The downloadable profiles for the SP 4000 work excellently on most images; the problems I have are extreme cases.

Fig 6. Another tough image that Entrada Natural handles with ease

Update Feb 07: Moab seems to have re-profiled their papers, since I wrote this review, but I'm not seeing any improvement. The 4000's EEM profile is so high-quality and such a near match for ENW that I hesitate to gamble my money on a custom profile. Instead I do the following. In the printer driver under Advanced settings I set the paper thickness to 3 and the colour density to -10. This addresses the choked-up shadows. I then add a Curves layer (Photoshop) with the tweak to the blue channel shown in Fig 7. This largely corrects for the cream cast in the highlights from the paper colour.

Fig 7. Blue channel tweak: no change in shadows or mid-tones; slight increase in highlights

My Take

I have to eliminate Entrada Bright White because I need blacker blacks and Kayenta because of gamut limitations; I wasn't really looking for a pure white paper in any case.

On the other hand, Entrada Natural forces me to confront my ideals. I seriously mis-doubt it is possible to create a better paper while still holding to the goals of uncompromised longevity. Its yellowness is likely just a fact of life if you want to side-step optical brighteners that fade over time. While the pale cream colour of the paper can affect certain very pale hues, the upside is that it adds a pleasingly warm tone to most images. In balance, there are very few images in my portfolio that I don't prefer on Entrada Natural over pure white papers like Hahnemühle Photo Rag.

The only objective weakness I can find with the paper itself is scuffability, which seems to be unavoidable in wide-gamut coatings. Further, because it's colour handling is so similar to Enhanced Matte's, I can use the inexpensive Enhanced Matte for image development then switch to Entrada once I am ready to close in on a final print.

In the months since I first tried it Entrada Natural has become my paper of choice. I now very rarely even think of using any other paper for a final print.