papers destined to the digital printing business and laser papers

[crenedecotret]

Hi everyone, I recently had an interesting discussion with TheHat regarding what types of paper he uses for photos and other material and one of the hints he gave me was to look in the direction of papers destined to the digital printing business. Where I live these types of paper are extremely difficult to obtain. I have a contact with a major office supply store here in Montreal, Canada but they don't carry any of these papers, and have a very very limited selection of laser papers. I was able to obtain two samples from a paper company that is somewhat well known and established in my province. The papers are Rolland Enviro 100, in satin and smooth/gloss finish.

The papers are interesting in the sense that there are a lot of visible fibers in it, which can adds a bit of a texture and feel to the paper. The first thing I did was try different media settings in the print driver to see which laid down an appropriate amount of ink. I then proceeded to create profile with Argyll and a colorminki. I am using a Canon IP4500 printer.

I had interesting results. I thought the paper would be somewhat close to Epson matte paper. It isnt. While the paper has no problem handling high resolution prints, the gamut is a bit limited. I ended up with very precise prints, but that had no "pop" in color. Here is a quick test with the "iccgamut" command that is supplied with Argyll
Epson Premium Presentation Paper Matte: Total volume of gamut is 473767 cubic colorspace units
Rolland Digital Enviro 100 Smooth: Total volume of gamut is 219247 cubic colorspace units
For comparaison, a plain paper profile: Total volume of gamut is 163228 cubic colorspace units
as you can see there is a huge jump with the Epson Matte paper....

So this pretty much sets is half way between a Matte photo paper and plain paper. On my Canon printer, it's about as good as a quality card stock. I would not be buying this paper for printing photographs with a matte finish but I can see it being an excellent paper for DVD covers, prints for my son's homework if a few pictures are required, maybe even flyers/handouts.

I promised The Hat I would share my results, hence this post. Even if this paper was not "the one", I plan to keep trying to find samples of some of these and keep testing. I found a thread here where these types of papers are discussed a bit (http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=61928). The thread mostly discussed Canon 9000 vs 9000 mk2 but some of these laser/digital papers were discussed. Xerox igen3 paper seems to have gotten an honorable mention. The Hat also mention good results with laid papers.

I'm now trying to source some Domtar Cougar paper, which is another brand than is well known here in Canada (I think it's sold worldwide).

Is anyone else interested in testing different laser papers to see what kind of results we can get with inkjet printers? It could be great eventually having some sort of database. We all save money with third party, why not on paper? I'm sure there is something out there that can match Epson or Canon matte papers with a better price tag (on volume... thinking 1000 sheets or more)

 

[costadinos]

Proper inkjet paper has a special receiving layer, laser paper doesn't, hence the limited gamut when used with inkjet inks, and more importantly, stability and fade resistance issues.
There are lots of very cheap and properly coated papers on ebay and amazon. I would pick any of these over those designed for a different media any day.

Another cost effective option would be buying rolls of large format paper and cutting to the desired size (there are also lots of good third party large format papers, a brand sold by many ebay stores, "Xativa", is very very good and very cheap, very similar to the Epson equivalent).

What I personally do is buy rolls of paper that are used in the dry minilabs (by Fuji/Noritsu) and cut them down. Many different surfaces are available, and the cost ranges from 0.06Eur for a 10x15cm with Fuji paper to 0.025Eur for a 10x15cm when using a third party brand.

 

[crenedecotret]

I've seen rolls for really good prices. Just out of curiosity, what is your method for cutting them down to size with minimal waste?

 

[costadinos]

I have a 24" Epson 7900, so whenever I want to cut the roll down to smaller sizes, I print blank 24"x18" images, with the printer's auto-cut turned on, so I end up with pieces of paper with those exact dimensions.
I can then cut further with a desktop paper trimmer, to get 18 4x6" pieces with no loss, or 2 A3s with just under an inch lost.
That way, I get about 1150 4x6" prints from one 24"x100ft roll.

For instance, I purchased two rolls of this paper here:
http://www.graphicdesignsupplies.co...o-gloss-paper-roll-260g-610mm-30mt-p-789.html
(there are probably similar products in Canada)

Total with shipping was around 80eur. It could give 2300 prints if trimmed carefully, which would be 0.035 per print. Adding 0.015 worth of ink since I am using a CISS, and I can have a 4x6" for 0.05eur...Even traditional wet minilab prints cost more than that to produce...