Black Ink Type

Black ink type and black ink switching when moving from matte to luster and gloss papers – here’s my thoughts on this, initially triggered by Franks’ reply to my previous article HERE.

And I quote:

Another great and instructive article Andy. I have the r3000 but get slightly annoyed with the black ink changes from one to the other. Some further guidance on the use of these re paper ‘types’ would be appreciated by moi ~ please ♡

Look, he’s even put a heart in there – bless you Frank, that’s more than I’ve got out of ‘her indoors’ for years!

Now the basic school of thought over this switching of black ink type is this:

  • PK, or Photo Black ink type supposedly produces a smooth, highly glossy black.
  • MK or Matte Black ink type produces a dull, flat black.
  • Using a matte finish paper requires the MATTE black ink type.
  • Using Luster or Gloss paper requires the Photo black ink type.

The PK black ink type really only produces a HIGH GLOSS finish when chucked onto HIGH GLOSS media.  Its’ got a rather less glossy and more ‘egg shell’ finish when used on a more luster finish paper. There does come a “tipping point” though where it will look a little shinier than the finish of the paper – and it’s this tipping point where theory, clever-dicks and user-guides tell you there’s a need to switch to the matte black ink type.

The Matte black ink type does exactly what point two says it does.

The third point – replace the word “requires” with the phrase “can cope with” and we’d be about right.

The forth point is absolutely true; get this wrong by printing with the MK black ink type on high gloss paper and you’ll just waste consumables and potentially end up with the type of clean up operation normally the preserve of Exon & BP. Dot gain on steroids!

There’s also an argument that the MK black ink type produces a deeper black on matte finish paper than the PK black ink type – this is also true:

printing,black ink,profile,icc profile,black ink type,matte finish,gloss finish,luster finish,

Permajet canned profiles for Museum paper on the Epson 4800 printer using PK and MK black ink types.

As we can clearly see, the Matte black ink type does indeed accommodate a deeper black point than its counterpart Photo black ink type.

Adopting the Common Sense Approach

There are a few things we need to think about here, and the first one is my constant mantra that the choice of paper is governed by the “overall look, feel and atmosphere of the finished image” when it’s sitting there on your monitor.

Paper choice IS the final part of the creative process; for all the reasons I’ve mentioned in past blog posts.

You will also know by now that in my world there is little room for high gloss paper – it’s a total pain the bum because of its highly reflective surface; but that same surface can allow you to print the very finest of details.

But here’s common sense point number 1 – the majority of people reading this blog, attending my workshops and coming to me for 1to1 tuition CAN NOT produce images with detail fine enough to warrant this single benefit of high gloss paper.

That’s not because they’re daft or rubbish at processing either – it’s simply due to the fact that they shoot 35mm format dSLR, not £30K medium format.  The sensors we commonly use can’t record enough ultra fine detail.  There’s a really good comparison between the Nikon D800 and an IQ160 here, it’s well worth having a look – then you’ll see what I’m on about.

The point I’m trying to make is this; print on gloss from 35mm if you like; but you are saddling yourself with its problems but not truthfully getting any of the benefit – but you can kid yourself if you like!

I Lust After Luster Papers But How Lusty Is That Luster?

As I mentioned in the previous post, Calumet Brilliant Museum Satin Matte Natural is NOT a matte finish paper.

True matte papers never really hold much appeal for me if I’m honest, because they are very dull, flat and relatively lifeless.  Yes, a 12×12 inch monochromatic image might look stunning, especially hanging in an area where reflections might prove difficult for any other print surface.

But that same image printed 8 foot square might well “kill’ any room you hang it in, just because it’s so dull and so damned BIG.

True matte papers do have their uses that’s for sure, but in the main you need to discriminate between matte and what I call matte “effect”.

Permajet Fine Art Museum 310, Matte Plus and Portrait 300 are papers that spring to mind as falling into this matte effect category – and wouldn’t you know it, there are canned profiles for these papers for both PK and MK black ink type ink sets, as you can see from the image earlier in the post.

So, with regard to black ink type switching you have to ask yourself:

  • Am I using a paper the ACTUALLY NEEDS the MK black ink type?  Chances are you’re probably not!
  • If I am, do I really want to – how big a print am I doing?

In my own print portfolio I only have two images that benefit from being printed on a “dead” media surface, and they are both printed to Permajet Museum using the PK black ink type.

I had another one that looked “nearly there” but the heavy texture of the paper detracted from the image, so it was re-proofed and printed to Matt Plus, again using PK ink. It looked just the same from a colour/luminance stand point, but worse from a ‘style’ point because of the zero texture.

Along comes Calumet Museum Satin Matte Natural!

The subtle texture gets me where I wanted to be on that score, and that ever-so-soft luster just makes the colours come to life that tiny bit more, giving me a print variation that I love and hadn’t even envisaged at the time I did the original print.

Ink Type Switching

I have to say at the outset that I do NOT own an R3000 printer – I use wide format Epson printers and so have no commercial need for the 3000 DT format.  But I always advise people looking for a printer to buy one – it’s a stunning machine that punches well above it’s weight based on price point.

My Epson wide format does not hold both black ink types.  Switching entails a rather tedious and highly wasteful process; which I have neither desire or need to embark upon.

But if you have any brand of printer that carries both types on board then I’d highly recommend you to set the black ink type to PK, and turn any auto-switching OFF – that is, set switching to manual.

Right, now the super-pessimist in me shines through!

I’m not a fan of Epson papers on the whole, and there’s a lot more choice and far better quality available from third party suppliers ranging from Photospeed to Hahnemuhle, Canson, Red River and all points in between.

Now third party suppliers in the main will tell you to use one black ink type or the other – or either, and give you the correct media settings (Brilliant – are you reading this??).

But, if you have auto switching enabled, and use Epson paper, the print head sees the paper surface and automatically switches the ink to the ‘supposed’ correct type.  This switching process requires the printer to purge the black ink line and refill it with the ‘correct’ black ink type before printing commences.

Now these figures are the stats quoted from Epson:

Black ink conversion times:

  • Matte to Photo Black approx. 3 min. 30 sec
  • Photo to Matte Black approx. 2 min. sec

Ink used during conversion:

  • Matte to Photo Black approx. 3 ml
  • Photo to Matte Black approx. 1 ml

Now why the times and volumes aren’t the same in both directions is a bit of a mystery to me and doesn’t make sense.  But what is killer is that the carts are only 26 (25.9)ml and around £24 each, so 6 changes of black ink type is going to burn through as good as £25 of ink – and that’s without doing any bloody printing!!!

When ever I demo this printer at a workshop I never use Epson paper, auto switching is OFF and I never get a head sensor warning to tell me to switch ink even if I load Permajet Museum – the head sensor doesn’t warn me about the fact that I’m using PK ink.

Yes the printer could be up the spout, but using a canned PK profile the resulting print would tend to indicate otherwise.

Or something slightly more dark and sinister might be happening – or rather NOT, because I’m not using OEM paper………...What was that I heard you say?  Good gracious me…you might think that but I couldn’t possibly comment!

One thing to bare in mind is this.  For the most part, the majority of print media will work exceptionally well with the PK black ink type – BUT NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND – you’ve been warned.  If you want to know how the captain of the Exon Valdez felt and be up to your ass in black stuff then go ahead and give it a try, but don’t send the cleaning bills to me!

I did it once years ago with an HP printer – I can still see matte black ink tide marks on the skirting board in my office……it wasn’t pretty! And it screwed the printer up totally.

Using PK on matte media will only effect the D-max and lower the overall contrast a wee bit; unless it’s a very low key image with vast areas of blackish tones in it then for the most part you’d perhaps struggle to notice it.  Sometimes you might even find that the drop in contrast even works to your advantage.

But don’t forget, you might not be using a matte media at all, even though it visually looks like it and says the word matte in the paper name.  If the paper manufacturer supplies a PK and an MK profile for the same paper then save yourself time and money and use the PK profile to soft-proof to AND to control the printer colour management.

Did that answer your question Frank – FRANK – can you hear me Frank??!!

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Brilliant Papers from Calumet

Brilliant Papers from Calumet

My thoughts on two papers from the Calumet Brilliant Papers range.

Brilliant Museum Printing Papers from Calumet,printing,brilliant papers,Calumet,desktop printing,printer papers,Andy Astbury

Brilliant Museum Printing Papers from Calumet

As I CONSTANTLY demonstrate to individuals and groups during workshops and 1to1 tuition days, printing is so damned easy it’s ridiculous.  Provided you get all your “ducks in a row” – and that’s not the hardest thing in the world to do, considering you’ve only got 3 bloody ducks!

How hard can it be???

Notwithstanding the necessity for an accurate monitor profile (duck number 1), the paper and its profile, or colour space if you like, form the back-bone of both “soft-proof” and the final print that spews forth from your printer – they’re ducks 2 and 3 respectively.

When getting someone on the “straight and narrow path to print righteousness” I always find it best practice to make them stick to one paper until they are super-familiar with the process, and begin to appreciate the fact that paper choice is the final step in the creative process.

I never want to confuse folk with custom profiles either – if I can get them onto a paper that comes supplied with a reliable OEM profile which includes the relevant MEDIA SETTINGS for the printer (these are crucial) then my work is done.

One paper with a very accurate OEM profile that has media settings as part of the profile name is Permajet Oyster 271.  A cracking paper for general purpose printing, it’s finish suits most images, and it’s still my go-to paper for prints of general wildlife and natural history subjects.

But it doesn’t suit everything, and landscapes, seascapes, and other styles of fine art imagery are the sorts of images that spring to mind.  It’s paper-white is a little on the cool side for starters – so printing a warm tone image to it increases your soft-proof workload for starters.

So I’m always trying different papers so that I can recommend them to my clients,  but no matter how good I find them, I’ll rarely recommend them if the supplied OEM profile is crap.  With the profiling gear I use I could get a workable custom profile for toilet paper if I had to, but telling someone new to printing that they need to:

  • Spend £1500 on the gear
  • Learn how to use what looks like the most scary software GUI on the planet
  • Waste 1 or 2 sheets of paper and ink printing the test charts (it’s not a waste really but that’s how they’d see it).

isn’t a real option.

But now I’m in love with two papers from Calumet and their Brilliant Papers Museum range.  They are:

  • Brilliant Papers Museum Satin Matte Natural
  • Brilliant Museum Printing Papers from Calumet,printing,brilliant papers,Calumet,desktop printing,printer papers,Andy Astbury

    Brilliant Papers Museum Inkjet Paper – Satin Matte Natural

  • Brilliant Papers Museum Silver Gloss Natural
  • Brilliant Museum Printing Papers from Calumet,printing,brilliant papers,Calumet,desktop printing,printer papers,Andy Astbury

    Brilliant Papers Museum Inkjet Paper – SilverGloss Natural

 

Both these papers, in my opinion, are up there with the very best of them.  And, while they cost – size for size – twice as much as something like Permajet Oyster; they are both far more than twice as beneficial to the easy production of fine art landscapes and other images that require a bit more from the printer paper to add the final touch.

I’ve used both papers on the Epson R3000 with the Epson ink set, and on my Epson 4800 that carries a Lyson ink set, and all I can say is that I’m more than impressed, and have no trouble in recommending you give them a go.

On the Epson R3000 I used the “canned profiles” downloadable from Brilliant Papers website HERE  but you need to understand that Brilliant have not exactly been sensible here and have omitted to give you any indication of correct media settings.

I’ve actually been using media settings of WCRW (water colour radiant white) for the Satin Matte Natural on the R3000 and TFAP (textured fine art paper) on the 4800.

For the Silver Gloss Natural the media settings for both printers have been UPPPL (ultra premium photo paper lustre) and results have been superb.

Just in case you don’t understand why media settings need to be set correctly, different papers require, amongst other things, different inking levels from the print head – too much ink and the print will look dark, too little and it’ll look pale and washed out.  There is also the little matter of what’s called “dot gain”.  Some papers have a hard glossy surface, others a more rough and porous one. A nozzle droplet of a particular size might be fine on a gloss paper, but that same size droplet on a fine art rag paper might well ‘bleed’ and spread out like it was on blotting paper.  This bleeding, or dot gain, leads to a reduction in sharpness of fine detail.

So, media settings are important – they ain’t there for the hell of it you know!

The “canned” profiles plot for the Epson R3000 using MK ink for Satin Matte Natural and PK ink for the Silver Gloss Natural (sRGB included for comparison):

Brilliant Museum Printing Papers from Calumet,printing,brilliant papers,Calumet,desktop printing,printer papers,Andy Astbury

Click to enlarge

And for the 4800:

Brilliant Museum Printing Papers from Calumet,printing,brilliant papers,Calumet,desktop printing,printer papers,Andy Astbury

Click to enlarge

I swapped the plot colours around by mistake – my bad!

I always used to like the look of images printed on Permajets Fine Art Museum 310, but 90% of the time I felt the texture somehow visually ‘got in the way’.

The texture of Brilliant Papers Museum Satin Matte Natural is not quite so pronounced which means I like it better!

In practical terms the colour space of the paper, though ever so slightly smaller than the Permajet Museum paper, does give you slightly deeper blacks and that tiny bit of extra shadow detail clarity.  All in all, a very good go-to paper, especially for the more monochromatic image such as:

printing,brilliant papers,Calumet,desktop printing,printer papers,Andy Astbury

“The Portal”

The Brilliant Papers Silver Gloss Natural.  I find it difficult to actually describe the finish as “gloss” – it’s more like a very fine grained lustre to be honest.

And the difference between the two papers?  Well, the Silver Gloss just has that little extra contrast in the medium and darker midtones – it’s a bit like adding 8 or 10 points of clarity to an image inside of the Lightroom Dev module.  I’d definitely consider this a great paper for landscape and fine art imagery that contains just that little bit more in terms of colour variation and saturation:

printing,brilliant papers,Calumet,desktop printing,printer papers,Andy Astbury

“Stepping Stones to Oblivion”

All in all two very nice papers from the Brilliant Papers range that will be seeing regular use both in my own work, and in my workshops and tuition days; though not exactly budget-priced papers they’re no where near as pricey as some – plus, don’t you think your images are worth it?

And just in case you were wondering; I too was quite surprised at just how well matched the Brilliant canned profiles for the 4800 worked out on my Lyson ink set! I’ve written custom profiles for both of these papers, and there is generally so little difference between the custom and Brilliant profiles (which are really intended for the Epson ink set) that I can’t tell the difference between the prints I’ve done so far – and I’ve done a few!

Though for my own printing I’ll always use my custom icc profiles.

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