Swellable choices.

Paper in large cut sheets for the HP DesignJet 30/90/130 dye ink jet printers is becoming increasingly hard to find under the HP brand name. This is hardly surprising, coming from America’s worst run big business. What distinguishes this paper from most current offerings is that the surface swells to absorb the ink dyes used in these printers, in contrast to almost all current ink jet printers which use pigments deposited on the surface. Further, archival life (80 years) is guaranteed with HP’s Vivera dye inks. If you use pigment ink paper with the HP 30/90/130 printers there is no guarantee that the ink will either dry properly or deliver archival life.

As I do not want to buy paper in rolls and have to cut it up manually, a process comparable to a root canal once you get to deal with paper curl, I did some research on large cut sheet supplies from sources other than HP. I write ‘sources’ rather than ‘manufacturers’ as HP never made its printing paper, outsourcing the task like with everything else they ‘make’. The paper boxes state ‘Made in Switzerland’ but I have never been able to determine who the maker is

Moab‘s web site is confused about the meaning of Vivera inks. This has been a trade name which HP has used for both its archival dye and pigment inks. Thus Moab’s statement on its site that ‘Our papers all work with Vivera inks’ is not sufficiently specific to give comfort about use with the DJ 30/90/130 range.

Museo (Crane) specifically states that dye inks are not going to have archival lives used with their papers.

Ilford is hip to dye inks, offering those as a choice in both its regular and commercial sizes. However, the commercial papers come in rolls only and the only one in their regular range which is usable with dye inks is Galerie Prestige Mono Silk which is stated to be for black & white only. I (hardly ever) do black & white, so move on.

Hahnemühle offers hope. They claim to have been making paper since 1584. Hahnemühle is a German company with subsidiaries in England, France, America and China, so it’s unlikely they are the manufacturer of the HP-branded paper. Their largest cut sheets are 17″ x 22″ – a little under the 18″ x 24″ capacity of my DJ90 – but they specifically state that the following papers are suitable for use with dye inks, selling them in sample packs of eight, either matte or glossy:

Papers in the matte sample pack:

• Bamboo 290gsm (0,1,2,3)
• Photo Rag Duo/Book & Album (Sugar Cane) 220gsm – printable on both sides (0,1,2,3)
• Photo Rag ultra smooth 305gsm (0,1,2,3)
• Photo Rag 308gsm (also available in 188gsm and 500gsm) ** (0,1,2,3) (188gsm and 308gsm only; 500gsm comes in 24″ x 30″)
• Photo Rag Bright White 310gsm ** (0,1,2,3)
• German Etching textured 310gsm ** (0,1,2,3)
• William Turner textured 310gsm (also available in 190gsm) ** (0,1,2,3)
• Museum Etching textured 350gsm (0,1,2,3)

Papers in the glossy sample pack:

• Fine Art Pearl 285 gsm (0,1,2,3)
• Photo Rag Baryta 325gsm (0,1,2,3)
• Photo Rag Satin 310gsm ** (0,1,2,3)
• Photo Rag Pearl 320gsm (0,1,2,3)
• Fine Art Baryta glossy 325 gsm – for black & white (0,1,2,3)
• Baryta FB Glossy 350gsm (0,1,2,3)
• Daguerre Canvas 410gsm (4)
• Monet Canvas 410gsm (4)

** Denotes that an icc profile is available for download on the Hahnemüle site for the HP DesignJet 30/90/130 printers.

Notes:
0 – Available in 8.5″ x 11″
1 – Available in 11″ x 17″
2 – Available in 13″ x 19″
3 – Available in 17″ x 22″
4 – Available in 11.7″ x 16.5″

Each of these also comes in a variety of larger roll sizes. Weights are shown above as they are of concern. HP-branded Premium Plus Satin weighs in at 280gsm, Premium Plus Glossy at 286gsm. So there is an issue as to whether the HP will handle heavier papers loke those above, which will be thicker.

Hahnemühle (“Ha-ne-mule-er”) still offers downloads of paper profiles for use with the HP DJ 30/90/130 printers and I explain how to install these for Lightroom 2 and 3 users in a five-year old piece here written in anticipation of the day when HP-branded dye ink jet paper would no longer be available. That day is close.

For Lightroom 4 users I will include a downloadable file of paper profiles, in the follow up piece, for a handful of Hahnemühle papers, once I have tested these, together with instructions as to where you need to copy these to so that they show up properly in both the Develop/Soft Proofing and in the Printing modules of Lightroom 4. The enhanced soft proofing (screen preview of the print) capabilities of LR4 really make upgrading a lot of sense if you are still on an older version of LR. The soft proofing in LR4 not only simulates the colors of your finished prints, it also simulates the white color of the paper you tell LR to soft proof to! And the differences are quite easily visible on the display.

Archival HP DJ 30/90/130 profiles appear here on their site. I will include all of these – and more from my archive – in the two follow up articles to this piece.

B&H lists a sample pack including all of the above papers for a modest sum and I have one of each of matte and glossy on order:

I’ll report back after having run some tests. There will be two subsequent pieces – the first dealing with Hahnemühle non-glossy paper surfaces (Matte and Textured), which I suspect most readers here use. The second will deal with glossy Hahnemühle papers (Satin and Glossy), glossy being the surface I use most of the time as it delivers the highest dynamic range and detail.

Matte/textured paper tests appear here.

Glossy paper tests appear here.

Fade tests will be published three months hence when I have the results.

Tiling is the answer.

Background:

Back in 2005 I wrote about making Really Large Prints. That meant 13″ x 19″, a veritable wallet size compared to what I am doing here. We are talking 36″ x 48″ or seven times the area.

On occasion I have regretted buying the 18″ wide HP DesignJet 90 printer, wishing I had instead paid a little more for the 24″ DJ130. But when it came to making a 36″ x 48″ print the other day, neither could have done the trick. At least not in one pass. And making something really huge for my DJ90’s seventh anniversary seemed the right thing to do.

With my DJ in perfect tune after its annual checkup I was all set, comfortable that perfect colors would result following a recent colorimeter profile session.

Why not just delegate the work?

There are so many variables you cannot control in delegating this task that I discounted the idea in seconds. They include:

• Finding a good print shop.
• You have someone making minimum wage, charged out at $100/hr, giving tender loving care to your baby, in between beer and pot breaks. Yes, they will have a jumbo printer which makes this on one sheet. So?
• Getting the colors matched correctly to your calibrated display image – good luck with that.
• Getting the big print home undamaged. USPS/UPS/Fedex? Ha, ha, ha! They will fold it to get it into your mailbox. Don’t laugh – that has happened to me before.
• Longevity. How can you believe the claims made by the print shop for the inks and mounting board? I use original HP Vivera inks which have been tested fade-proof for 80 years by Wilhelm Research. As I’ll be 6 feet under, pushing up the daisies – or maybe fertilizing them – in under half that time, that seems long enough. My mounting board is certified, acid free, Bainbridge Alpha 3/8″ foam core, and will probably outlive King Tut. So there.
• Satisfaction. Sure, it’s a menial task and one you might not want to do daily. But it is satisfying as it gets doing this yourself and doing it to a higher standard than any agent ever will. I despise the saying “If you want a job done well, do it yourself” because it’s asinine in the extreme, but this task makes for an honorable exception. “Printed by the artist”, don’t you know.

Get my point?

Choosing the right image:

I had a large expanse of wall space viewable from the landing on the upper level but had never quite found a picture to fill it. As I started working on my Golden Gate Bridge series one image immediately suggested itself. Taken from the GGB overlook at the site of the old WW2 battlements, the image is simple, surreal and uncluttered. Just the ticket.

Simple, surreal, uncluttered. The ultrawide 20mm lens used adds to the effect.

Tiling application:

Next it was time to shop around for a good tiling app for the Mac. Tiling apps allows a print to be made over any number of abutting sheets of paper, the result being trimmed and joined just so for display. You can do this in Photoshop but it’s a pain. I settled for the inexpensive SplitPrint which had good reviews and indeed proved capable and easy to use. $5.99.

Preparing the file for tiling:

Before you do anything, examine your file square inch by square inch for sensor spots at 1:1 in your photo processing application, looking especially hard in big, continuous tone areas. Nothing will ruin your day more than finding you have missed some blobs once the print(s) are made. Retouching them now will save a lot of heartbreak later. Just about every sensor will accrue dust and oil spots with use, regardless of whether it has a cockamamie ‘sensor cleaner’ built in or not.

Thereafter the process is simple. I exported the image at the original pixel size of the sensor in the Nikon D3x as a TIF file to Photoshop CS5. Then I ‘uprezzed’ the image to the final print size desired, which would be 36″ x 48″, or four sheets of 18″ x 24″ paper through the printer – the largest it will take. Resolution was set to 240dpi, the maximum the DJ30/90/130 series of printers can handle.

Uprez dialog from Photoshop.

The file was then saved to the Desktop as a JPG, highest quality. SplitPrint at this time only accepts JPG files. No matter. The file was some 45MB in size.

Then into SplitPrint and the required settings were made. I created a custom setting for 18″ x 24″ paper in the Print dialog of SplitPrint and told it to spread the image over four panels thus:

The SplitPrint tile settings.

Dry print runs:

Now 18″ x 24″ paper is not cheap and neither are ink supplies, so I first tested SplitPrint making a 16″ x 20″ print on my office monochrome laser printer using four sheets of 8 1/2″ x 11″ plain paper to see if things aligned and that margins were properly handled. You do not want the margins swallowing any content and neither my laser printer nor the DJ90 can make full bleed borderless enlargements. Margins are unavoidable and the inside ones will have to be trimmed off when assembling the four printed panes.

All went well but, ever cautious, I printed the first panel in color to the DJ90 on a test piece of 13″ x 19″ paper to check that everything was as expected and to verify that colors were true.

SplitPrint printer dialog.

This test confirmed good colors with a perfect match to my display thanks to the EyeOne colorimeter, so I loaded up the printer with four sheets of 18″ x 24″ premium glossy, checked that all the cartridges had ink (running out part way through will not make your day ….) and let her rip, telling SplitPrint to print all 4 images after setting it to use HP Glossy paper with bidirectional printing (‘Best’ quality). This takes a while, some 12 minutes a page, so I did the only rational thing possible. I took my assistant, Bert the Border Terrier, for a walk after the first page started coming out.

Tell me all you want about the romantic days of darkrooms, red lights, blackouts and poison chemicals, for me nothing beats the thrill of seeing a full color image emerging from the DesignJet in broad daylight.

The first pane emerges.

The final prints:

Here’s the finished article, with Bert the Border Terrier for size. I will mount these on acid free board, after trimming the borders (SplitPrint permits small overlaps and draws the cut lines on the images though I had no need of these) then attach all four to the wall, ready for a faux wooden frame. SplitPrint did a perfect job of aligning the images on each page. If it’s of interest I will paint the wooden frame in the colors of the Golden Gate Bridge itself! The paint codes appear below.

Bert and the untrimmed print(s).

Trimming and mounting:

Once the print borders are trimmed (carefully!), the prints are tacked to the mounting boards with the matching sides at the edges of the board. I do not own a 24” trimmer so have to remove the borders with a straight edge and Stanley knife. This is by far the riskiest part of the whole operation, rife with opportunities for error and injury. As the boards are very accurately cut this approach confirms that everything has been trimmed squarely. It’s either right or it looks schlocky. You can opt to leave the margins in place and install these as discrete panels on the wall but I find that sort of thing has been done to death and avoid it:

Tacked prints and boards assembled for dry run to check fit. 26″ bike wheel for reference.

Then it’s off to the dry mounting press to permanently heat mount the prints. Once that is done much of the risk of damage to the fragile prints fades.

In the dry mounting press at 200F. Border Terrier at 102F.

It’s at this point that you start thinking that Michelangelo had it easy daubing that ceiling.

The prints are dry mounted and ready for wall installation:

Ready for hanging.

I use glossy paper. Sure, it’s a pain to work with, fragile as heck and demands very high standards of cleanliness for it shows every blemish, but the result is unrivaled among paper prints for detail, resolution and punch.

Golden Gate bridge paint color codes:

Here are the color codes for those of you into the most beautiful bridge in the world; you can have the shade mixed at your local hardware store to paint any wooden frame you decide to install:

Color codes for the paint used in the Golden Gate Bridge. Click the image for details.

Speed:

There really are no shortcuts here. It’s hard manual labor. SplitPrint makes generating the four panes trivial but after that it’s an exercise in concentration and attention to detail. The next time I do this I doubt I’ll shave more than a few minutes off the total production time, which is several hours. Trimming and wall mounting are by far the most time-consuming steps.

How does it look:

In a word, stunning. While the viewer can get no closer than 10 feet to the print from the second floor landing, even at 2 feet resolution and detail rendering are to die for.

Gear:

Camera? Nikon D3x with the 24mp sensor. But, frankly, a 12mp D700 or any number of similar sensors (FF or APS-C) would be just fine for this setting, though the image would show lower resolution at the same ‘nose in print’ distance. There is more undiluted swill written about the need for high pixel count sensors than you could possibly imagine.

The lens? No magic sauce here either. An old 20mm Ai-S 20mm f/3.5 MF Nikkor – that’s the tiny one which fits in a jeans pocket, handheld at f/8. Mine is 1982 vintage and ran me $215. I added a CPU for $29. You spent how much on that plastic AF-S zoom?

Installed. Wooden frame to come. Prints below are 18″ x 24″.
Cotton gloves on the window sill are used to handle the prints.

A little goes a long way.

My HP DesignJet 90, the 18″ carriage model, was commissioned March 14, 2006, so it’s approaching seven years in age. One recent print with a dark black silhouette showed less than perfect blacks and deep, lustrous blacks are one of the many strengths of this excellent printer. Amazingly, B&H still lists the 24″ DJ130 for under $1300 new, and all ink cartridges and printheads remain available on their site, though you may have to hunt about a bit for the special swellable paper which absorbs the ink dyes used by the machine. Regular modern pigment ink papers do not work.

The HP DJ30/90/130 series is blessed with truly outstanding diagnostics and a quick checkout was all it took to find the cause.

First, I dialed up the HP Maintenance Utility which uses online software at HP. For Mac users you have to use OS Snow Leopard or earlier or an even older PPC machine, as HP never updated the software to run on Intel machines. Snow Leopard comes with Rosetta, the PPC emulator software and will run the HP Maintenance Utility fine. Apple recently re-released Snow Leopard on DVD and if you want to run the HP Maintenance Utility on a modern Mac it’s your best choice, though whether it’s even installable on the latest Macs I rather doubt.

I use a decade old iMac which runs Tiger and uses a PPC CPU. Unlike its modern day descendants it does not overheat and refuses to die.

You can run all these print jobs using plain paper in your printer – 8.5″ x 11″. Here’s the Image Quality Diagnostic – this one can unfortunately be run only by using the online software and is the best for determining if a printhead is failing:

No real issues are disclosed here but printhead alignment is called for, judging my some of the colored squares in the center section. The full interpretive section for the above appears here.

Then I ran a printhead alignment which can either be done using the online utility or using the button presses illustrated here:

This did disclose a problem with the black printhead:

The large ‘X’ mark above testifies to a worn or blocked head.

Before deciding on cleaning or replacement of the head I ran the ‘Information Pages’ printout (see above) and got this:

Gaack! The black printhead is 2,534 days old, meaning 6.9 years. It’s the one which came with the printer when I bought it new in 2006! So rather than trying to clean it, I simply replaced it. Pigs get slaughtered.

After replacement of the black printhead – the new one has been on my shelf for ages and is already out of warranty! Some users claim that heads over 30 months old will not work but obviously my experience does not bear this out.

When a printhead is replaced in these machines, they automatically run a printhead alignment which takes some 10 minutes and requires one sheet of plain paper.

Here’s what I got:

All is well.

Finally, out of curiosity, I ran the ‘Paper Usage’ report:

Some advice on older DesignJet printers:

Would I buy one of these used? Only if I could see the Usage Reports and Diagnostics shown above. Many were used by printshops which have beaten the heck out of them. New heads – there are six – run $35 each and cartridges cost a similar amount, so all new heads and supplies total $420. Add $35 for feed tubes. No bargain. Further, if the printer has been unplugged for any period of time, reckon on changing the clogged feed tubes as I had to do when mine went into storage for a few months when I moved a few years back. I explain how to do that here.

Bottom line? I would not pay more than $200-400 for a lightly used HP DJ90/130 (18″/24″) printer, anticipating that some parts will have to be replaced.

Spare parts:

I get mine from Spare Parts Warehouse. The ink feed tube assembly runs $35 and is easy to replace.

Would I buy a new HP printer? Hell NO. I would not buy anything from America’s worst run business whose customer service is a joke. Buy an Epson. The 24″ model runs $3,000 but they will fix it for you when it breaks.

Result:

Success. Perfect blacks were restored.

Here’s the print which was giving me problems:

In the extract, below, you can see a tear sheet of the old print, before the repair, superimposed on the new – night and day:

Printhead failure and analysis:

I have illustrated this before but it bears repeating. Right after the annual checkup, above, the DJ started printing everything with a green cast. This indicates printhead failure as ink levels were fine.

Here is the analysis chart:

I ran the diagnostic report using the online HP utility and this is what I got:

Diagnostic report showing printhead failure.

Comparing with the above chart, you can see that the color patches at A1 (should be magenta), A2 (should be purple) and B2 (should be red) are faulty.

The chart states that A1=M, A2-C+M and B2=Y+M. Note also that the central patch in the left middle section is wrong – it should be magenta. M (magenta) is the common factor to all four error conditions, so I concluded that the Magenta printhead was faulty. $35 to B&H later and it was replaced (a 30 second task) – do insert plain paper when doing this as a printhead alignment chart will be automatically printed when a head is replaced, and the printhead alignment will be performed automatically. It takes some 10 minutes, so be patient. Sure enough, re-running the diagnostic report showed all is well and the DesignJet is back to perfect operating condition.

A great place for mounts and supplies.

I first made mention of Dick Blick in these pages when writing about how I mount and frame large prints.

My Fletcher FlexiMaster Framing Tool came from Dick Blick Art Materials making trivial a job which would otherwise be too horrid to contemplate.

The other day I wanted to order some 4B (super soft) graphite leads for my son’s pencil, which he uses for schoolwork. My interest in writing instruments is not new to this journal; I wrote of that great ball pen classic the Bic Cristal earlier and my accidental over order has me set for life! When it comes to pencils, the best pencils come from Germany – just like the best cameras used to. Forget your Genine Murrican Dixon Ticonderoga with its wretched soft wood construction, lack of heft and a graphite lead waiting to snap at the merest provocation. Real pencils say ‘Staedtler’ on the body and while I was an aficionado of their splendid wooden ones when younger, time marches on. So when our son needed a really good pencil for homework it had to be a Staedtler, one of the retractable ones. The ergonomics are superb, the design appealing to the eye and the range of hardness in graphites large – everything from 4H (so hard you wonder who needs this) to 4B, the latter a pleasure to write or draw with and easily erased when errors crop up.

Now, elegant as they are, I cannot abide those super fine 0.2mm/0.5mm/0.7mm offerings from Staedtler or the Japanese. Those are for limp wristed pansies. A Real Man (my son) writes fast and presses hard. Those sub-millimeter graphites do not cut it. Period. And forget built-in erasers which always run out when you need them. Carry a big one.

The Staedtler Technico Lead Holder.

Indeed, the criteria for nomination to the exalted level of ‘Classic’ set forth in that earlier piece on the Bic ball pen apply equally here:

• It has to have class. I can’t define that but I know it when I see it.
• It must be superbly functional.
• Its use must be second nature.
• It must have magic. Yes, that sense of fitness for purpose you get when you pick it up, use it.
• It must be made well enough to survive the ravages of time and use.
• It must be reliable.

So you can add the Staedtler Lumograph to a short list where others of the like of the Porsche 911, the Leica M2, the Rollei 3.5F, a Patek Philippe Golden Ellipse, an iPad and the Border Terrier make their home. Most have a definite attitude, but only the last comes with a wet, cold nose.

The Staedtler Technico Lead Holder runs all of $5 and holds a real lead – 2mm in diameter. You are not going to break that. The retraction mechanism is easy, simple and fun and the removable cap includes a point sharpener. Perfection. Ideal for signing your limited run prints with chi-chi ‘1 out of 100’ nonsense (because you will never sell that many). And while you can find these in many local art stores, good luck finding 4B leads. So I dialed up DickBlick.com on the web and ordered the boy some 4B and 2B inserts. Except, being the doofus that I am, I ordered 4H and 2H, realizing my error only after I hit ‘Pay’.

This is where it gets good, and this is where you will want to give your business to Dick Blick. I called them with the usual dread of interminable phone trees and someone who speaks English on a par with the guy behind the counter at the local 711. Well, blow me down. A lady with a genuine American voice speaking perfect English (errr, American) answered on the first ring. No punch this for English, that for Spanish and kick your cat for Swahili. I pleaded stupidity, she changed the order like that, and my boy is now rejoicing in 4B leads in the best mechanical pencil on earth, and has no excuse for a less than perfect point. The two I bought him will likely last through graduation, and he’s in Fourth Grade!

There’s more to it than that. Blick’s paper catalog may only show a fraction of what is available on their web site, but it includes a cornucopia of supplies for mounting and framing photographs. Frames, mats, mounts in any shape, material, finish and color you desire. And tools galore, from the point setting tool I mentioned above to mat cutters, tools and jigs for making your own frames, and so on.

While I have long been a customer of Documounts for my mounting and framing supplies, Dick Blick is going to get my next order. All because of my silly mistake.

Care needed.

I finally got around to mounting some glossy prints made on the HP paper I received as a gift.

The Seal 160M.

I use a Seal 160M press which I bought ages ago, used, on eBay for some $400 + half my net worth in shipping. It weighs a ton! They are still in business and even shipped me some missing nuts no charge. Today’s price- some $1,400 – reflects the uncompetitive cost of US labor. Will we ever see a flood of cheap ones from China? After all, a press is just a couple of slabs of cast iron and a heater. I doubt it. Few make big prints for mounting any more and I doubt the replacement market in commercial businesses is significant.

Only a fool buys these new. They regularly crop up for $250-500 used and all parts are readily available, not that there’s much to go wrong. The 160M weighs 60 lbs so try to buy locally. The 210M comes in at a whopping 75 lbs. Buy locally and bring a friend.

Typical eBay selling price – this is for the 210M. The 210M has two pressure adjustment knobs in contrast to one for the smaller 160M

The device could not be simpler, so if the heater or thermostat blows, replacement is cheap and the process simple. The whole thing is made up of less than two dozen parts, and B&H carries the essential ones. Framers’ Island also carries spares, including thermostats.

Not exactly complex ….

You can read all about mounting prints here.

I turned the temperature down from my usual 190F (HP Satin) to 170F for the glossy and also first removed the heated platen and gave it a thorough scrubbing with steel wool to remove any surface imperfections. You know how glossy is! Further, I’m careful to keep the release paper (prevents the print sticking to the heated platen) in a dust proof bag to avoid ingress of particulate matter which could mar the surface.

The results are simply spectacular. The surface loses a minor amount of gloss (it will much more at 195F so temperature seems critical) and there’s not a divot or scratch to be seen. But it is a labor of love! The faster these prints go behind glass, the better.

Mounted glossy prints with helper.

To learn more about the Seal press click the download buttons below. If you track down a used one, look for the S or M designation in the model number, indicating it’s a later model which does not use asbestos in the wiring insulation. Life’s too short as it is.

Download the Seal 160M/210M manual. 160M – up to 2×18.5″,
210M up to 2×23″. Both accommodate any length.

Download the Seal 110S manual – up to 2×12″

The maximum width of a board which these will accept is twice the larger dimension of the platen – you simply flip the board around. Overlapping/reheating a previously sealed area has no deleterious effect. The maximum length is infinite as you simply slide the board sequentially through the press. A 13″ x 19″ print needs two passes in my 160M, whereas an 18″ x 24″ requires four, both when centrally mounted on a 22″ x 28″ mat. It’s the size of the mat, not of the print, which constrains capacity. 2 minutes under pressure per ‘press’ using Drymount mounting tissue and release paper does the trick.

Nothing beats a professionally mounted print and, as I have written before, I am still searching for evidence of fading or discoloration in prints I mounted almost 40 years ago using a domestic iron. So when snake oil salesmen come calling, telling you that heat mounted prints fade, ask to see the evidence.