Blocked Up Blacks on Matte Paper

A friend of mine was having problems printing a specific image on his Epson 2200, so I offered to give it a try on my Epson R2400 using Red River Dourian Art matte paper. I am using the paper/printer profile supplied by Red River, which are typically very good.

Although one of the two specific problems did not show up on my printer, an issue with blocked up blacks was also visible on my version of the print. Specifically, a section of a black coat with RGB values ranging from (15,15,15) to (32,32,32) completely blocks up and shows up as solid black on the print.

As I have little experience printing on matte papers, I am wondering whether this is just a "fact of life" with matte papers, or if this is a problem with the Epson Ultrachrome inks, or cause by a poor profile?

Can anyone also tell me whether a custom made printer/paper profile could solve this problem?

The Red River Dourian Art paper is very well rated, and has a reported DMax of 5.5(!) - see The Great Paper Chase for more info on this paper.

Any insight into this issue would be much appreciated.

Rob

Hi Rob,

A few things ...

Blocked up shadows is usually a common symptom of either (1) an inferior profile, or (2) a fine profile, but one that doesn't match the characteristics of your machine. That is to say, printers are made with manufacturing tolerances, and it is possible the ink laydown strategy that comes out of your R2400 is different than the one that was used to build the profile.

I have experience using Dourian Art with the Epson UltraChrome and UltraChrome K3 inks and it should not be having blocked up shadows.

A custom profile should definitely help (as well as improving color accuracy and tonal separation in general). However, please see the note below about the discontinuation of this paper.

Please note that the DMax of Dourian Art is not actually 5.5, but around 1.65. (The 5.5 number cited by Clayton above is a rating based on his own numeric scale from 1 to 7.)

Finally, note that Dourian Art has been discontinued by Red River. This was a paper made for them by Hahnemuehle in Germany. The closest paper to it is probably Hahnemuehle Photo Rag Duo (which is a bit thicker), also double-sided. Just FYI.

Eric,

Thank you for your reply... I am aware that the Dourian Art is (unfortunately!) being discontinued. I have stocked up on 100 sheets of 8.5" x 11" and 50 sheets of 13" x 19", as I really like this paper and its price is significantly less than the Hahnemuehle Photo Rag Duo or 308gsm... As I reserve this paper for prints that I sell, it pasper should last me a while. Considering the high price of this paper, I wonder whether it may still be worth it to get a custom profile done... Hum...

The matte black ink cartridge that I am using is actually very old - do you know whether this contribute to the problem of blocking up the shadows? I guess I could toss it out and put the new cartridge in to test.

Thanks for the help, and the clarification on the DMax ratings.

Rob

Rob, I've had similar experiences with various matte papers using canned profiles. I finally got myself a RIP ( ImagePrint ) and that totally cleared up the problem. For me, the colour accuracy and the extended dynamic range offered by ImagePrint is worth the cost. I was quite lucky in that I bought ImagePrint 2nd hand for $100, which saved me from getting a bunch of custom profiles generated.

Hi Rob, how old is the MK? Are we talking about 6 months, a year, two years?

madmanchan wrote:Hi Rob, how old is the MK? Are we talking about 6 months, a year, two years?

Dare I say that it's the original cartridge from when I purchased the printer in June 2005?

As mentioned, I have not done very much matte paper printing, except for about 250 greeting cards. The cartridge was originally opened in November 2005, and used every few months since then.

This is the first time that I really notice something that may be a "problem" with the matte black ink printing.

I'll try replacing the cartridge at will post a follow-up.

Thanks for the help!

Rob

Update: I tried replacing my matte black ink cartridge with a "fresh" one, and the results are exactly the same.

In a way it's reassuring to find out that the ink shelf life is that long! On the down side, it looks like the "stock" profile for this Dourian Art paper is not quite good enough for my specific R2400 unit. I'm going to try to get a custom paper profile made for it to see what the results are - I'll report back in a couple of weeks.

Rob

I wanted to provide an update on my problem...

I had a custom profile made by Eric Chan (a.k.a. madmanchan), and tried it out tonight on the same problem image.

Wow!!! I simply cannot believe the improvement. The shadows are no longer blocked up - there as much detail as I can see on screen. And the colors are spot on (well, for as much as I can tell using a somewhat-warm desk light). The shadow rendition for this problem image is as good as when I had printed it on a premium luster type paper. No small feat for a matte paper!

I highly recommend that people have a custom profile made if you believe that you have the slightest problem with the "generic/canned" profile that came from the paper manufacturer.

Eric's profiles can be purchased from http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/ph ... files.html . He was helpful and very quick to respond - defintely worth it!

Thanks Eric!

Rob

I was having similar problems to Rob's trying to print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308 paper using the stock profile from the Hahnemuhle web site.
In general, I really liked the results with this paper but there was a definite problem with the blacks to the extent that certain images that looked great on Premium Luster didn't work at all on this paper.

After reading this thread, I also ordered a custom profile from "madmanchan" and I am equally impressed with the results!
I'm getting far more detail in the blacks and the images that were unusable with the original profile now look great!
I'm also getting improvements in shadowy parts of some images where I hadn't even noticed an issue before but there's
an obvious and dramatic improvement with the custom profile.

So I'll second Rob's recommendation to get yourself a custom profile (see Rob's post above for details) if you're having any issues with the generic profiles.
It was definitely the most bang for the buck I've ever gotten in my photographic endeavors!

chez wrote:I was quite lucky in that I bought ImagePrint 2nd hand for $100, which saved me from getting a bunch of custom profiles generated.

How so? Their profiles are still generic (i.e., one profile per paper type and printer model), right? Are they just better profiles than those provided by printer and paper manufacturers? I would have thought the variability between individual printers (of the same model) would be significant enough to warrant printer-specific profiles.

milicia wrote:I was having similar problems to Rob's trying to print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308 paper using the stock profile from the Hahnemuhle web site.

I tried that Hahnemuhle paper in the R1800 that I own, in my office's R2400 and in a store's HP 9180. Didn't like the results from any of them (using Hahnemuhle's profiles for each). Then I got a custom profile for my R1800 and love the results. I guess the 2400 or 9180 might produce even better prints with custom profiles, but I was disappointed in their initial results as they're supposed to be significantly better for matte than the 1800.

(BTW I assume people know to brush this paper/spray it with compressed air before printing to remove flakes.)

My experience is that the Hahnemuehle-supplied profiles tend to be sub-par. Similar to the Ilford-supplied ones (which are built using an old, outdated version of ProfileMaker Pro as I recall). Epson UltraChrome and K3 can produce excellent results on the Hahnemuehle papers in general, so if you're seeing less-than-impressive results than perhaps the profile is at fault. In particular, for matte papers, I haven't found any papers with a bigger color gamut than the Hahnemuehle ones ... they seem to be able to hold the inks very well.