Museo Fine Art Paper - Paper Chase

Museo paper needs no introduction to our American readers for this US-made paper has an established reputation over there. In the UK it has always been available from on-line paper but has tended to be used by a minority of in-the-know printers who value its no-compromise archival properties. This is a feature that is greatly stressed in the publicity material by the maker and all sheets of media are protected by thin acid-free interleaves and great pride is taken over the packing and maintenance of the paper grain during sheet cutting. Originally the media production was owned by Cranes but this has now been acquired by Intelicoat Technologies with no change in manufacturing, so it remains the paper that the discerning users know and love.

In addition, we also look at two new products from Hahnemühle and make comparisons where appropriate.

Our sample box provided us with nine surfaces as listed in the table. Separately, on-line paper provided a box of the specialist Museo Pan 132x40" for testing. We declined the opportunity to print onto the canvas media; it is not really compatible with the test-bed Epson 3800.

The Museo website provides icc profiles for almost all of the major professional and enthusiast printers from Epson, Canon and HP. Aside from that there is a considerable body of expertise available through the specialist web forums such as DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint. However, if you go Googling for information it might be better to include Cranes in your search for a while to ensure that you pull in all the archive data.

General Properties

The Museo products are all made with the purest form of cellulose, Cotton Rag, hence they are termed 100% Rag. To maintain the archival storage properties of the media they are also calcium carbonate buffered so that they remain acid free. Optical brightening agents are not used to improve the 'brightness' of the base paper or coating and so there is no opportunity for yellowing with age. This yellowing is the most serious criticism that the limited edition monochrome workers have of product such as Hahnemühle Photo Rag. In fact Hahnemühle Photo Rag has a smattering of OBA in the base material because trimmings are fed back into the mash when making the base paper – very green-minded too! Other papers do undoubtedly yellow with age; we have plenty of examples lying around the office. It is particularly noticeable if a print has been left out partly exposed to the daylight and we have also noted paper reacting with the cheap paper we use for our general writing work when the two are left in contact. An inkjet surface seems a bit like a sponge for absorbing contamination from stuff it is in contact with, hence the care in packing the Museo product!

All Museo products have high natural brightness (as measured by the Lab luminance value) and they are all very similar slightly cream coloured, between two and three points up the Lab b scale. The spectral traces confirm a total absence of optical brighteners.

To save repeating ourselves under every sub-heading it is worth highlighting the general findings.

We did not find the profiles from the Museo website to be particularly to our liking although they returned quite good statistics. Generally the shadows were blocked up, in some instances so far that they were off our measuring scale which stops at 40 RGB points. All the surfaces showed some gloss differential and patchiness at the higher inking levels and a susceptibility to 'scuffing'. The image on the left is a glancing angle shot of a print on Museo Pan. The disturbing gloss differential was also indicated in greyscale ramps as a tone discontinuity. Against this is the fact that these are truly archival materials, some of the best regarded in the field and you may have to apply a fixative coating such as Print Guard to finish the job. These are high-value media, intended for high-value work, and going the extra mile should be worth it or you might wish to look at alternatives! The number of samples available and time constraints forced us into using a 343-patch target to build our own profiles and we carried out none of the profile tuning that we would use for contract proofing set-up. Despite this, all our bespoke profile improved the statistics on colour audit.

All of the media except Archival Matt loaded successfully in the front, top tray (the sheet feed) of the test Epson 3800. The Archival Matt we had to load in the rear tray.

Museo Max

This media is available in two weights, 250gsm and 365gsm. The literature claims that it has the highest gamut of any fine art material available, a claim we could not substantiate as the definition of such a material is too vague!

Using the website profile, the print quality was only moderate. Although the saturation was high, it was at the expense of the shadow areas which were blocked up to an indeterminate level off the scale of our test target (ie at more than 40 RGB points). We used the instructions on the Museo website, namely turning Black Point Compensation (BPC) 'off', perceptual rendering intent, Enhanced Matt paper as the media setting and 1440dpi resolution. We showed the effect of not using BPC in the April–May issue (page 124) but, in a nutshell, using BPC opens the shadows and loses saturation. However, for the monochrome worker shadow detail is usually important. Looking at the audit print, there was a visual jump in the greyscale gradient, a density reversal in the Granger Chart and an apparently very bright, saturated print. The highlights were quite well rendered up to 250 RGB points.

The statistics confirmed the visual impression. The print was over-saturated in the skin tones, an unusual result. The grey linearity curve ran down to 20% luminance value before flattening out fully. The Dmax was 1.48 and the metamerism 1.4. The errors were highest in the blues and magenta reaching a value of 20 Lab points. Despite this the average error was a reasonable 3.26ΔE 2000 across the Macbeth swatch set.

Using our own profile and with BPC turned on produced a cleaner set of tests. The Granger Chart was more open, the discontinuity in the greens was absent and the saturation was reduced to more usual levels. Overall the print was not as heavy on density and there was less evidence of gloss differential and patchiness. The highlights extended to 250 RGB points. The average error was reduced to 6.2 Lab ΔE/2.75 ΔE2000, good values for a matt product. No change was made to the Dmax but the curve was straightened up so that the shadows were open down to 25 RGB points.

Museo Portfolio Rag

This is an extra-smooth surface intended for the reproduction of photographic images. It is 300gsm in weight.

As with other media we had a web profile and we generated one for ourselves. The effect was the same, presumably due to our using BPC. The web profile resulted in a higher saturation image with higher errors overall although the differences in the statistics were quite small. The bespoke profile once again removed the tone reversal in the Granger Chart. However, we found an additional problem when printing some real images. Use of Relative Colorimetric rendering intent posterised some of the skin tones. This was worse with the bespoke profile than with Museo's own profile from the web. The exercise illustrated the need to make real prints. The statistics gave no warning of the posterisation even though it did show both in the paper print and when we soft-proofed in Photoshop using the icc profiles for the paper. The 'flaw' such as it was, was partly down to the image which was soft focus at too low a bit depth – all the profile did was exaggerate the situation due to a further compression of the tone range. The effect was not present though with the Hahnemühle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth paper.

Museo II

Above: The audit results from each side of the double-sided Museo II were as close to identical as it is possible to expect – important for print matching across an album page spread.

There are two media at two weights – 250gsm and 365gsm, with both sides prepared for inkjet printing. They are specifically intended for the making of albums and portfolio books and are available in the 'book' sizes of 8.5"x11", 13"x19" and 17"x22" only.

Having lost confidence in the web profiles and having a smaller number of samples, we went right to making our own profile.

These media are intended for double-sided printing and so we printed each side, one after the other, using identical settings and then audited the results. For matching across two sides of an album spread the sides must match for colour and density. They were in fact very close, within a couple of tenths of a point across the gamut patches.

The shadows were slightly more open with this media, down to 20 RGB points and the Granger Chart was clean. There was some gloss differential in the deepest tones. The densities measured were 1.43 and 1.44 for each side. The tone response curves for each side matched almost perfectly to each other, but showed a discontinuity between 5% and 10% luminance values.

Museo Archival Matt

Above: The small discs adhering to the surface of the Museo Archival Matt were an issue we had not expected.

Above: No sign of any OBA in any of the Museo media.

Museo Archival matt is a 250gsm which has quite a lot of surface character; we expended a flat callendered surface from our experience with other material carrying this name. Museo call the finish 'velina'. It is available only as A4 or A3+ sheets. Although the sheets were very flat (Museo are big on getting the media grain the correct way round) they refused to load in the sheet feeder, the only one of the range to fail. There were a number of imperfections on the sheets, small circular discs 1.2mm in diameter. One of these was centred on the image and fell away after printing leaving a white hole in the middle of the image. While it mattered little to us as we were throwing the prints away we can imagine this occurrence being seriously annoying for normal printing losing time, paper and ink to the user. Of the eight sheets we had only two that were free of these discs and some sheets had as many as five on them. The flaw was doubly disappointing as Museo go to such lengths to pack their materials correctly, even using acidfree sheets between the media.

In the audit tests this material was marginally the worst of the group, returning errors of 7.8 Lab ΔE/3.56 ΔE 2000. The shadows retained detail to 25RGB points, the highlights to 250RGB points. The Granger Chart was smooth and there were no visual discontinuities in the greyscale gradient. The loading difficulties which forced us into using the front, board-loading may have influenced this result although there was no over-spraying visible in the samples other than the black text. We went back and retested using the rear manual feeder. The results were visually similar other than the cleaner text.

Above: Once the paper is underway through the Epson 3800 it seems to become smaller and is actually quite manageable.

Museo Pan Pro Paper

This is a 365gsm paper specially cut and packed for large-scale panoramic images. It is 13 inches by 40 inches and substantially packed in 25 sheet quantities. In the hand it is quite a substantial paper with a luxurious feel – it could not fail to impress. The media is archival standard, 100% cotton rag, acid free and buffered. It is free of optical brighteners. The surface finish is described as 'velina' and is a slightly creamy colour. The surface texture is quite subtle and undulating.

On colour audit the profiled paper returned average errors of 6.1Lab ΔE/2.9 ΔE 2000. The Dmax was 1.43, metamerism was 1.6 Lab points. The shadows retained detail all the way down to 15 RGB points; the highlights up to 520 RGB points. The gamut volume was 544,910, placing the media in the middle of the pack for Epson 3800 printers using fine art type media. The Granger Chart was clean with no discontinuities other than some slight patchiness in the deep browns and blacks. Like some of its siblings, the profile/paper combination exaggerated posterisation in skin tones on Relative Colorimetric rendering intent but not on Perceptual intent. This is not a paper issue – an image one!

Overall then, a media free from any vices which will be of great interest to monochrome landscape workers wishing to make big impressive pans!

Pan Production

Not all printers are capable of being set to 40" prints. The Epson 3800, for example, has a 37.4 inch limit. However, the larger machines all go to lengths which are, for practical purposes, limitless. Significantly the popular Epson 2400 has a limit of 13" x 44" paper size which fits very nicely.

Providing your printer has banner mode there are some interesting fiddles described on the Qimage website for fooling a printer to use paper in excess of its length limit. However, they do seem to need a banner mode and so we were forced to the lower limit of 37.4 inches printing on our test bed 3800. Nevertheless we still made a very impressive print. As far as we know all of the RIP solutions provide for larger paper sizes than the standard for the various printers. However, the cost of a box of Museo Pan is such that you would be advised to take advice and check before ordering.

The pans are almost Editor height (not a lot, in truth!)

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