Great, thanks Jon. Given the issues I had with IGFS and HPR Baryta is it possible that they may also had paper changes, albeit less dramatic?
I don’t really think so. I think that you’ve got something really odd going on.
But - I hope that you prove me wrong!
We have some HPR Baryta here - and I have not heard of any QC issues with it. We do not have any IGFS in house.
We’ll shoot you the new curves soon.
There may be something odd going on, but if so then it’s affecting two quite different printers using different K7 inksets in two different locations with fairly different climates. Which is not impossible, but my money is on the paper.
Which printers are you creating profiles for?
We will produce a profile for any supported Epson printer model that uses the QTR driver for X800 or X880 printers.
If this were my printer - I would grab another and see if the same problem persists. Too many users with the same model not having your issues. But there are other users with same issue. Just less than a handful in comparison to boatloads. So, it’s difficult to troubleshoot your particular issues if not ink, if not workflow, if not methodology, if not environment. Only so much we can do for hardware or electrical or OS, etc… But, we’ll keep at it!
As I posted on another thread that Jeff is on (just to update this thread the same), we requested Jeff and other users having strange/bad output on Epson Exhibition Fiber paper to send us a few sheets of their paper for us to test and compare to the paper we’ve been using successfully. This will help us determine if the paper is different/bad.
Thanks~ Dana 
in addition, I did a test on Friday and found that Exhibition Fiber looks better with the GO printed at 2880dpi/bi-directional, instead of the normal 1440dpi for GO on other glossy papers. I feel the one GO coat at 2880dpi looks better and is easier than printing two coats at 1440dpi, as we previously recommended with some papers, including ExFiber.
I was using paper donated by Jeff, so what he sends will cover me (although I doubt that any of this will be of much use to me, as I can’t see you generating new curves for the R1900, and at the moment I can’t imagine me ordering a custom one, given the experiences to date). Are you still planning on sourcing some from Amazon, as per post #24?
We will check samples sent from customers first.
Dana,
That sounds like another one for the new documentation. I was unaware of the one/two pass discussion, uni/bi discussion.
I’ve got four sheets of paper ready to be posted later today. On recent mail experience, it will take a bit over two weeks.
So this is one coat of 30,000 units at 2880 bi-directional? Which papers other than EEF do you recommend this for? How does this relate to the numbers that Jon gave in this post and in other posts in that thread?
http://www.inkjetmall.com/tech/showthread.php?1413-Is-gloss-differential-on-custom-profiling-targets-OK&p=6800&viewfull=1#post6800
I just mapped the canned profiles of EEF and TPP for a post on LuLa, hoping to find a bit more on these two papers. They appear to me to be quite different so I then compared an IGFS profile that I made to the canned one and they are close. I’ll attach the grab. It’s looking to me like these are two similar, but different, papers. In the attached plot TPP is single colour while EEF is true colour.
I literally JUST discovered the GO printing at 2880 the other day, and need more time to test further, with more papers, etc… Once I do more testing and collect more data, I will certainly post my findings.
I am very suspicious that Traditional Photo Paper ISN’T the same as Exhibition Fiber, and will know more after testing paper sent from customers in different areas of the world. It just doesn’t make any sense to me that they’d call the same paper something different, depending on where in the world it’s sold… I have more confidence that your Hahnemuhle Photo Rag is the same as what we have in the US.
More info to come shortly!
Best~ Dana
Thanks Dana, I have more faith in HPR too. Someone pointed out to me recently that Epson isn’t a paper company, and their paper offerings should be treated with suspicion. As this saga unfolds, that statement keeps coming back to me. The other thing I have discovered about EEF is that it gets a bad rap for fading of the base tone. Has this been your experience?
It’s also puzzling that EEF is sold in the US but not elsewhere and TPP is sold elsewhere but not in the US.
The case of EEM / EAM / EUPPMP (subject of another thread) is hopefully clearer, as the name has changed twice in the US but not elsewhere. That’s just a marketing decision, and the paper is only different if Epson in different regions is sourcing it from different factories / suppliers.
I know who makes Epson Exhibition Fiber in the USA, and have known him for a long time. And his paper is one of many papers that Epson does not produce but markets under its branding.
When an OEM uses a third party, they have the produced media and they have the Trademarked name of the Product. And they really are very separate. The Trademarked Brand Name is more important to the OEM than the media which it represents.
On the other hand, when a third party produces a paper - the media they produce and the Trademarked name are inseparable.
Even for a third party, consistency is very difficult to maintain over a decade or more. While the OEM can shift its Trademarked Brands from one media to another.
The third party dedicates his life to producing the best media that his company can. The OEM is interested in returns. There is no CEO/Founder type at the OEM. Rather, there is a bureaucracy of decision makers.
Agreed Jon, but are you saying that EEF is made in the USA? TPP says ‘Made in Switzerland’ on the box, and appears to come from Epson Europe. I want to get to the bottom of this, if for no other reason than the time invested.
However, I’m having serious doubts about it when I am being told on LuLa that I can expect my prints to go from neutral to brown pretty quickly. There seems to be general consensus that the OBAs in EEF are a serious issue. I’d hate to have someone who has bought a print on my doorstep complaining.
The last step of making media is the coating. The two most widely used coaters are in Switzerland. For Epson, one of these is coating and then converting and packaging. So at least partly it is made in Switzerland even if the underlying media is made elsewhere.
There is a general OBA paranoia that exists in digital printing - while the same amount of OBAs in darkroom papers and papers that have been widely used in the art world only promote some general concern. Digital printers do not feel as comfortable with the medium yet as they should so they strive to be as “archival” as possible while ignoring in general the fact that inkjet media itself has not been widely studied yet. A bigger concern than OBAs are the coatings themselves which will continue to be hydroscopic and are in much greater risk of being stained by atmospheric pollution and outgassing than being converted to yellow staining or browning by intense light. I would be more afraid of the materials in your studio that might adversely affect these inkjet media. Store them in inert poly bags, sealed with tape that is safe for archival storage and away from plastics, acidic boxes, and fumes!
Got it. Thanks Jon. It’s good to get a counterpoint to the LuLa set. I didn’t really think that you would be praising a paper that came with issues.
Epson announced they were discontinuing this paper some years back and I bought a ton for my studio in 24x30 size sheets. It’s really beautiful paper. No issues. And still have a great supply of it. The discount was extraordinary and yet they didn’t discontinue it.
But, we do buy 44" rolls to print James Nachtwey’s color prints. And no issues with it for the most part. Occasionally, we send back a few rolls here and there. But, again almost all papers have some issues from time to time.
Do Epson make any of their papers? I’ve always assumed that they didn’t. I assumed it was outsourced. As you say, it’s a specialist task, especially the coating. I wonder about their inks as well, esp the dyes, which are rumoured to be made by Fuji.
People are saying that Epson claim that EEF & TPP are the same. I guess it’s possible that what this means is that they’re meant to be the same, as in made to the same specifation, but it’s going to be hard to guarantee that they’re exactly the same if there’s more than one supplier.
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