Calumet have added four fine art papers to their standard paper range. These new editions to the range are called Brilliant museum satin matte & silver gloss and are offered in both white and natural paper.

Brilliant blurb

“Brilliant Museum digital media has been especially formulated to meet the high standards and preferences of the most discriminating fine art printer. Made in Germany to exacting specifications using the most technologically advanced methods, these papers are optimally coated for the latest pigment inks, but will also secure superb results with dye-based inks. They are capable of yielding extremely high resolution and amazing color depth”

So what are these papers like, well its a tale of good, the bad and the ugly. We will start with the good and that is the satin matte paper.

This paper is an addition to a increasing range of 100% cotton rag papers which have a satin semi-gloss type effect when the ink hits the paper. Other papers in this range include Hahnemuhle photo rag satin, Lumijet photo white satin, Permajet art silk range. The advantage of this is that users of gloss papers still get the shiny effect while gaining the look of a cotton rag which can normally discourage your typical gloss user away from this type of paper. Also users of Epson’s high end printers can get a semi-gloss look without having to change from MK to PK ink.

Sarah

I’ve printed out various colour and B&W images on this paper and I love it even my automotive images look great printed on it. The saturation and colour gamut are great while the depth of blacks and dynamic range of the paper impress. Some of my portrait images are quite warm and printed on the matte satin paper the warmth is still there particularly when printed on the natural version. Colour portraits don’t often look that impressive to the eye on cotton rag papers but the extra sheen you get from the paper chemistry really shows up the highlights giving a nice 3D look to the print.

Between the passes - Lake District

When I printed the above picture on satin matte the colour saturation and impact of the image was retained however the paper is not as sharp as I would like it to be but when viewing large prints at normal viewing distances you don’t notice this.

Black and white images print with neutral cast using the ABW function on my Epson R2400with the white paper, with a warm cast when printed on the natural paper (to be expected). I made an enlargement of a old B&W print of my mum from 1954 and the tones where retained between the old and new.

Onto the bad and the ugly

Brilliant describe the silver gloss paper as an alpha-cellulose papers that emulate the classic air-dried glossy fiber-based silver-halide papers used by the master black-and-white printers. I would not describe it as that at all. The paper is is more like Hahnemuhle fine art pearl than one of the increasing range of FB papers. It is certainly not glossy although it has a sheen to it, it is not very sharp and does not hold blacks very well which look quite muddy. Both colour and B&W prints I made were not very impressive and I was quite disappointed at this considering how good the satin matte paper looked. Like the satin matte paper it is not very sharp and the ICC profiles downloaded from the Brilliant site give my prints a nasty red hue. The B&W images printed using ABW were however neutral on the white paper while slightly warm on the natural version. I don’t really have much to say about this paper other than there are much better FB gloss (harman FB gloss, Innova ultra smooth gloss) and much better photo satin papers (Permajet photoart pearl, Hahnemuhle fine art pearl)

Conclusion

The good (satin matte) the bad and the ugly (silver gloss). I would buy the satin matte but I would leave the silver gloss in the shop. The paper represents great value for money with the satin matte costing per sheet 59p, £1.16, £1.52, 1.96 for A4, A3, A3+ and A2 respectively. It also comes in rolls 17in, 24in, 44in x12m costing £37, £46, £93 respectively. Remember that these are only my opinions and you can try the paper yourself as Calumet sell a sample pack with 2 sheets of each for £4 (web prices) and make your own mind up.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Paper review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.