QTR-Quadtone RIP

> I live in Longueuil and I have not found any Moab paper in Montreal

The bias toward Moab is mostly my own. It partly comes from the fact 
that the pre-punched and scored pages for my portfolios are Moab 
Entrada.

Others here are quite happy with many other papers. Certainly worth 
looking at the Moab, but I don't think it is any sort of "amazing 
fix" for the contrast or anything. ;>) Mostly just personal 
preference.

Jon Cone detailed the d-Max for some papers in a thread on the 
piezography3000 board recently:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/piezography3000/message/28689

Quote:  

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The papers are personal of course...

Some choose by dMax (in parenthesis)

Epson Enhanced Matte(1.571)
Epson Velvet Fine Art(1.615)
Hahnemuhle German Etching(1.647)
Hahnemuhle Museum Etching(1.644)
Hahnemuhle Natural Art Duo(1.687)
Hahnemuhle Photo Rag(1.678)
Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Bright White(1.673)
Hahnemuhle White Velvet(1.640)
Inkpress Picture Rag Cool Tone(1.541)
Inkpress Picture Rag Warm Tone(1.564)
Innova Cold Press Texture Natural White(1.620)
Innova Fiba Print White Matte(1.580)
Innova Smooth Cotton High White(1.600)
Innova Smooth Cotton Natural White()
JonCone Studio Type 1(1.630)
JonCone Studio Type 2(1.624)
JonCone Studio Type 3(1.650)
Moab Entrada Bright(1.584)
Moab Entrada Natural(1.561)

Others by the color the paper imparts....
I would order as many of the paper sample sets we sell and choose that
way!

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You can see that the difference in dMax is not large among the group, 
though some are higher than others. Many of the "bright white" papers 
have OBA's (brighteners), which may make more of a psychological 
difference. The Entrada dMax is not much different than the Enhanced 
Matte in fact.



For comparison, I came across these numbers from Eric Chan's Epson 
3800 web site the other day.  Note the reference to dye based inks 
too ;>):

http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/Epson3800/faq.html#deepest_pk

Quote:  

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What is the deepest black I can expect with Photo Black (PK) papers?

In Color mode, I have measured L* = 4.0 (d-max = 2.35) on Ilford 
Smooth Pearl. In ABW mode, I have measured L* = 2.9 (d-max = 2.49) on 
the same paper. This is getting close to the performance of dye-based 
inks -- impressive! It may be possible to get deeper blacks on other 
papers or with different driver settings. 

What is the deepest black I can expect with Matte Black (MK) papers?

In Color mode, I have measured L* = 16.0 (d-max = 1.68) on Epson 
Velvet Fine Art paper. In ABW mode, I have measured L* = 13.8 (d-max 
= 1.77) on the same paper. It may be possible to get deeper blacks on 
other papers or with different driver settings. 

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Note that the "L* = 16.0" is close to the L=15 that I remembered for 
Epson Enhanced Matte when I did my QTR curves with Carbon 6.

Good luck!  Have fun without getting too much of a headache.

Best,
Michael