Epson Stylus Pro 9600

As a connoiseur of mindblowing colour brilliance and accuracy in digital workflows I am the proud owner of a GretagMacbeth Eye-One Pro UVcut and ProfileMaker 5. I use these tools, sometimes in combination with a production raster image processor (RIP) to realize colour accuracy and colour gamut beyond what is available with a manufacturer's standard printer drivers and canned ICC profiles.

I recently built profiles for Epson's PremierArt Water Resistant Canvas, Breathing Color's Brilliance I, II, and Chromata White canvases using the Eye-Pro UV/PM5 combination for my Epson 9600 Ultrachome. I have been extremely happy with Breathing Color's Brilliance I and Brilliance Chromata White canvases and my eyes told me that colours are much more brilliant and contrasty on the Breathing Color canvases than on the PremierArt canvas. However, I wanted to check to be sure that this was the case. Using PM5's gamut viewer I compared several profiles including those above.

A three dimensional (L*a*b) representation of three different medias for comparison purposes. The translucent blue is the PremierArt Water Resistant Canvas, grey is Breathing Color Brilliance I, and the red is UNCOATED, non-inkjet specific Fabriano fine art paper, profiled for professional graphic artist and printmaker Rina Chan. Oddly, Breathing Color's canvas which is advertised to have wider gamuts than many other canvases, sometimes with special note to PA's WR Canvas, actually has a noticeably smaller gamut and, at some points, even smaller than the uncoated Fabriano! PAC profiled with gloss black on an Epson 9600. The other two profiled with eboni (Matte) black. Qualitative tests seem to show completely different results. Could be the glare from the PAC.

The widest gamut, strangely, came from my Premier Art's Water Resistant Canvas profiled followed closely Bill Atkinson's PA WR Canvas profile and then by Chromata White and then by Brilliance II and then Brilliance I. There were some points at which a high quality fine art paper which came uncoated and not designed for inkjet use actually demonstrated wider gamut than the special canvas with special coatings.

If I showed you a series of prints of the same image varying only in substrate printed (and the associated printer colour profile), I'm sure that you'd very easily pick out one of the Breathing Color canvases as having the most vibrant colours, deepest blacks, and highest contrast and most detailed shadows. What's strange is that the plots show a very different picture. My inference is that all of the Breathing Color products profiled were matte finished and the Premier Art canvas was glossy and exhibited glare under most lighting conditions which reduced visual contrast. In short, the Breathing Color substrates look really awesome and much better than the Premier Art canvas even though the Premier Art canvas produces a profile with a wider gamut.

I still have some Premier Art Canvas on which I'll print your work for a ridiculously low price. Check out my new large format printing service website. It's ugly right now but it has the information that you need to get accurate colour on a variety of papers in widths of up to 44" and unlimited lengths.

For accurate colour in your digital workflow check out GretagMacbeth. I recommend the Eye-one Display and Eye-one Pro line of products for display and printer profiling. If you'd like a demonstration or would like to purchase GretagMacbeth products feel free to contact me as I am currently using some of their products in my workflow and I am also an authorized reseller. </shameless commercial plug>