Lentic - photography

I’m not talking about the color of the eye here, but how the eye perceives color.

Martin gave me a couple of prints on the harman gloss paper when we met this weekend. I was kind of hoping that Harman had packed the paper I got wrong since I perceive it to be warmer in tone than the luster paper I have. I’m talking Epson premium luster, Ilford smooth pearl and Fine Art Pearl. Everyone else, except for the guy I talked to in the photo store here in Oslo, seems to think it is whiter and colder than most other papers. Well, Harman didn’t pack my paper wrong, Martin paper looked exactly the same as mine. That leaves only my uncalibrated eyes and brain. Somehow the cold/warm scale must be flipped up there.

I think I will try an experiment tomorrow. I will photograph a stack of different papers and open the result in photoshop. Maybe the eyedropper tool will tell me something. After all, a cold tone paper should have more blue in it, and a warm tone more red.

It seems the Harman Gloss FBAL paper still has a surprise or two for me. Earlier I complained about how susceptible the surface is to scuffing. It was enough to just pull the finger nail lightly against the surface to get big nasty marks. My solution to this was obvious, just be careful. I didn’t however see how these prints could survive for long in a folio binder or in a hand bound book.

Today I picked up a print I made little more than a week ago. It was kept precious for about five days until I decided to edit the image and make a new print. After that, the print spend almost a week among the trash at my desk, rubbing against all sorts of office hardware. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was almost spotless. I dug through the pile of test prints, and even the ones with a lot of stuff marks were resistant now.

My conclusion is simple and obvious. This paper / ink combination needs a long time to Cure. I already knew the surface needed to settle over night to look its best, but it Seems like you should leave it even longer before it is fully hardened. Haven’t experimented, but I would let them alone for two days before I start to handle them.

So, one more issue out of the way

A side note:

I don’t really know for sure how the ink is working, but I know the pigments are encapsulated in some sort of polymer, a then mixed with a fluid solvent. When the ink is applied to the paper, the fluid evaporates fairly quick, but what if the ink really needs even more time to cure. If the polymer encapsulation is not fully hardened, but forms stronger bonds between each other and the paper after the fluid is gone. This is quite common in different types of paint, so why not. That would explain why the print needs this long time to settle. The differences between papers may easily be explained by how deep into the paper the ink soaks, and the adhesive properties of the surface coating.