Photo paper experiences: Costco Kirkland Photo Paper

[fotofreek]

I know the type of unit - I took a print shop course back when we set moveable lead type! Too bad I've been retired for eight years - the shop where I had all my commercial printing done would have done the cuts for me gratis. I guess I'm stuck doing one cut at a time by hand! Put on a good CD, kick back, and cut a bunch of paper.

 

[Nifty]

Honestly... while my cutter will cut these Costco photo paper sheets, I don't really use it for that.

I've found that after cropping and rotating images that very few of them find themselves as the right proportions to a 3x5, 4x6, 5x7, etc. So I usually just end up putting in the whole sheet and cutting out the image. I use the scraps for whatever sizes I need.

 

[fotofreek]

My wife wants prints to put in albums that take 4x6 prints. You are right about many images requiring a different ratio for cropping. I believe that this format came out of the 35 mm film format - 24mm x 36 mm. My digital cameras have a different image ratio that doesn't fit this or 4x5 or 5x7 ratios either. I find myself stepping back a bit or shooting slightly more wide-angle to create an image with a bit of extra space for freedom in cropping to her desired format as well as having the creative freedom to do other formats as well. What I often do when the image would be best cropped to 4x5 or 4x5.5 and I am printing for her albums is that I leave the crop tool in photoshop at 4x6 but crop to leave a white border at the sides by cropping beyond the screen image (with the default color set to white). I can then run lots of 4x6 borderless prints more efficiently with precut paper.

 

[Nifty]

There was a bit of space on the 8 1/2 sheets I printed the 4x6 prints on so I ran them through the printer again to print some color swatches that I'll stick in the sun and other places to test their color fastness.

Speaking of which, anybody hear anything about longevity of prints with this paper?

Okay, it is has been exactly 3 months and I got a lot of fading. Granted, these were in a southern facing window with quite a bit of light. The image doesn't show the contrast as well due to the limitations of my scanner, but here they are.

The swatches I have inside the southern facing room, but not in direct sunlight still look great. I'll leave

I'm currently using Costco Kirkland paper and a mix of inks from a couple suppliers (see here: http://www.nifty-stuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=24 ).

 

[fotofreek]

Rob - have you done equivalent tests with either Epson or Canon glossy paper and/or with OEM inks? Just curious to see if they are substantially better for prints that may be exposed to strong sunlight. Most of ours are either in albums or on interior walls without direct sunlight.

 

[Nifty]

I haven't done any of those tests... yet. I mostly did these because I had the space available on some 8.5 x 11 sheets I was printing.

I may run the tests with different inks, but probably not with different papers since the probablility of me ever moving from the Costco Kirkland paper is pretty small.

 

[hoomever]

I bought a pack of 125 sheets of 8-1/2 x 11, 10 mil, 260 gsm Kirkland Professional Glossy Inkjet Photo Paper at a Costco here in Toronto Canada. I noticed that it is made in Switzerland. I've read that some of the Kirkland photo paper is made in Japan. Could you tell me where your Kirkland paper is made? Does anyone know if there is a difference between these papers?

 

[fotofreek]

Also made in Switzerland. Rumored to be made by Ilford.