Ilford Mono Silk profile

Has anyone used Ilford Mono Silk paper? What profile are you using? Is this something I should get a custom profile made for?

Thanks,

Jeff

Hi Jeff~

I noticed nobody has responded to your post, so wanted to say I have never used this paper, so am not sure which pre-made paper curve may be most similar, but suggest trying a few pre-made curves for papers you feel may be similar to evaluate the results. If you’re not satisfied with the results, I recommend getting a custom curve made for the best possible results with your specific printer/ink/paper combination.

Best regards~ Dana :slight_smile:

I hadn’t heard of this paper, and I use Ilford a fair amount. It’s not obvious whether it’s still readily available, given the final bankruptcy of Ilford Imaging in Dec 2013 after a series of near bankruptcies, and the subsequent purchase of the trademarks and associated assets by Chugai Photo Chemical Co. Ltd of Tokyo, Japan and C.R. Kennedy & Company Pty Ltd of Melbourne, Australia in May 2014. (Note: the portion of Ilford that makes traditional film and paper, which is now a separate company located in the UK and not Switzerland, was unaffected.)

There is a little info about this paper in this thread:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=70745.msg567016#msg567016

My experience is that you can use the Gold Fibre Silk piezo curves for papers like Galerie Smooth Pearl and Gloss. I printed the 21x4 chart and measured linearisation for these papers and the similarity to GFS was uncanny. Piezo prints using the GFS curves are fine. It’s my impression that a lot of these Ilford gloss or semi-gloss papers use the same coating and differ in the substrate and OBAs etc. I think I read a comment to this effect somewhere by printing guru Ernst Dinkla. It would be worth trying the GFS curves and measuring linearity before you shell out for a custom curve.