One quirk.

As my correspondence indicates many HP DesignJet 90/130 printer users visit here for help with what ails their HP DJ printers, I thought I would make mention of a quirk which cropped up after I upgraded from Mountain Lion to Mavericks.

Mine is the DJ90 which goes up to 18″ wide. 13″ x 19″ prints were being printed correctly from Lightroom 5.3 but when it came to 18″ x 24″ these started printing 13″ x 24″, with the righthand most 5″ blank. I was unable to find any new drivers from HP on the web (no surprise there – they are probably busy paying management yet more while firing engineers) so decided to sniff around the print menus in LR to see what was what.

The driver I am using is the one downloaded through this pane:

Stock HP DJ driver downloaded and installed though Lightroom.

My DJ is connected to an Airport Extreme router and I print to it wirelessly from my Mac Pro in a separate room. Nothing new there.

Go to the Print module and click on ‘Print Settings’ lower left and you get this pane:

Boxes checked and unchecked.

I checked the ‘Scale to fit paper size’ box (the default is unchecked) and unchecked the ‘Scale down only’ one (default is checked).

Now 18″ x 24″ prints are printed perfectly once more.

Update for OS X Yosemite:

No issues. LR5 and Yosemite coexist happily.

Much better second time around.

Ask me what the best ways to show your photographs are and I will reply big prints, well printed hard copy books, a PDF on a tablet and last a computer display. I suppose TV screens work, but it just does not feel right to me.

I wrote over five years ago about publishing your own photography books with Blurb and came away disappointed. The price was overwhelming and everything else – paper quality, print quality, the divot in the cover – were underwhelming.

But times and technologies change so I decided to give Blurb another shot. Lightroom 5 added a Book module which integrates with Blurb but I simply exported my files to JPGs (2,000 pixels on the long side) then imported them into BookSmart, an app which can be downloaded from Blurb at no charge. The app comes in Mac and PC versions.

The app is really well engineered and while my 60 or so snaps imported oversized, requiring each be reduced to fit the page, the process was easy and fast. Note that if you want a spine title the book must be at least 80 pages. I decided on softcovers and paid a little more for the premium lustre paper. The weight and texture of the paper are serious art book quality and the printing is excellent. Printed images are just a tad more contrasty and darker than originals on a computer display, but nothing to complain about. The crop marks shown within the app are dead accurate. Even monochrome images show good if not great blacks and you can make out the lustre of the paper in this image:

I make these books for friends as Christmas gifts and, like my annual calendars, they show work solely taken during the year. This discipline prevents raiding the catalog for oldies and inspires me to come up with new things. I recommend it.

A scan of the book’s cover. Actual quality is far better.

With shipping, 60 page books, printed on both sides, with images on the front and rear covers, cost me $45 each after using a 20% discount coupon. As the paper is finally satisfyingly thick I see absolutely no sign of bleed through from opposing images. A contrast with my original experience. I messed about some with the Lightroom module but find the BookSmart app far easier to use and it’s not like exporting images to JPGs for import to BookSmart takes any appreciable time.

Recommended.

Very disappointing.

It has now been three months since I started fade tests on six selected Hahnemühle ink jet printing papers, test prints having been made on my HP DesignJet 90 dye ink printer, cut in half with one half exposed to eight hours of bright sun and the other half stored in darkness. Mine is a non-smoking household. I used original HP inks in all cases.

Three matte and three glossy test strips in the sun.

I reviewed Hahnemühle glossy printing papers here and matte papers here.

The results are extremely disappointing and I cannot recommend any of these papers for use with the HP DesighnJet dye ink printers if exposure to strong sun is contemplated.

Here are the before and after results – it’s obvious which is the ‘before’ and ‘after’ print in all cases:

The prints subjected to sun exposure were placed behind a regular domestic window. If mounted behind UV glass they might fare better but, candidly, the results are so poor that I would not waste time or money on any of these papers for use with HP dye inkjet printers.

Hahnemühle’s statement that their papers are ‘compatible’ with dye inks is at best a vague obfuscation, at worst an outright lie.

Use with pigment inks – no better: I cannot even recommend these papers for use with pigment inks. Look at the white margins in the above results. It’s even clearer in the originals I am holding in front of me. Without exception, every single margin – where no ink was ever deposited – is yellowed, the worst being the three glossy grades, the first three above. If you contemplate buying costly art prints ask which paper was used and if you hear Hahnemühle – run for cover with your check book, regardless whether dye or pigment inks were used.

I will move on and test other brands when time permits.

Testing Hahnemühle glossy papers.

Hahnemühle glossy paper sample pack.

Tests for the Matte paper sample pack appear here. I concluded that not one of these papers was adequate for high resolution photographic prints, the color and/or texture taking out too much resolution. The heavily textured papers were downright awful.

The Glossy sample pack mysteriously includes two types of canvas paper which I consider totally unsuitable for photographic prints and did not test. Photographs are not faux paintings. They are photographs.

My first reaction on opening the glossy sample pack was one of disappointment. After discarding the two canvas horrors, only one (Baryta FB) of the remaining six papers was a true white, in fact slightly whiter than the HP-banded Premium Glossy paper, with Fine Art Pearl being almost as white. None was anywhere near as glossy as the HP brand, the Photo Rag Satin was anything but Satin (here the HP Premium Satin truly excels) being surpassingly flat and bland. How this can be included in a ‘Glossy Sample Pack’ beats me.

Paper profiles:

Hahnemühle does not provide any paper profiles for these papers when used with the HP DesignJet 30/90/130 dye printers. Accordingly, I used the stock HP Premium Glossy Maximum Detail profile, with colors controlled by Lightroom, not by the printer.

Glossy paper characteristics:

Hahnemühle paper characteristics – glossy sample pack.

Printer settings:

In Lightroom. Note that a matte profile was used for Photo Rag Satin in preference to a glossy one.

In the printer dialog. Note that the Photo Matte setting was used for Photo Rag Satin in preference to a glossy one.

As is always the case when using an HP Glossy profile, the DesignJet will hold onto the printed sheet for a few minutes before ejection, thus allowing the print to dry. It can always be manually ejected, but be aware that the surface is very fragile at this juncture.

One sheet of the whitest glossy paper, Baryta FB, had a small black blemish, maybe 0.5mm long, but enough to destroy a print if it appeared in a light area. Inexcusable.

Results:

My gradings are based on three simple criteria for a glossy print. The paper must be a stark white and the gloss has to be a high gloss or a true satin for papers named ‘Satin’. The third is that colors have to be accurate.

Color fidelity:

This was the best:

• Baryta FB

This paper is extremely heavy at 350gsm, like the matte Museum Etching paper in the earlier matte paper test. Like that paper some color tracks were left in the bottom white margin from the printer’s roller, though strangely none on the printed area. The color rendering is outstanding, identical to HP Premium Glossy, but the finish s more satin than glossy.

I cannot recommend any of the other papers – too yellow, nasty surface finish or just plain yecch! (Canvas).

Fade tests in strong sun:

I will report results for both glossy and matte papers after three months of sun exposure, compared to a control sample stored in a cardboard box.

Conclusions and alternatives:

If my tests of 16 Hahnemühle printing surfaces proves anything it’s that the HP-branded papers are very good indeed. But my remaining supply of some 120 sheets of 18″ x 24″ is dwindling, so a replacement has to be found. HP’s paper avoids ridiculous excess weight, which serves no purpose and can cause roller marks.

There is no true glossy Hahnemühle paper here. The best is the Baryta FB, and it bears more resemblance to HP Premium Satin than to HP Premium Gloss, and Baryta FB’s high weight may result in ink smudges from the feed rollers.

Hahnemühle Fine Art Pearl leaves nasty blotches viewed at an angle, and only two paper base colors equal or exceed the whites of HP Premium Glossy – that same Fine Art Pearl (forget it, because of the blotchiness) and Baryta FB whose thickness causes dirt tracks from over-pressured rollers.

All the other papers in this sample pack are too yellow to pass muster for proper color rendering. Some of the finishes belong in a morgue, not on a photographic print.

Bottom line is that there is only one paper in the Hahnemühle mis-named ‘Glossy Sample Pack’ which I can recommend, the Baryta FB with the roller pressure caution mentioned above. And it’s not even glossy.

These tests of Hahnemühle papers have been very dispiriting. Not one of their Matte papers has anything to recommend it compared to HP’s Premium Glossy and Satin offerings and the Glossy ones are anything but.

Accordingly, I did some more research and will soon be testing Moab’s glossy papers. While I originally wrote these off as not suitable for dye inks, a revisit and more careful reading of Moab’s site, spurred by the poor experience with Hahnemühle’s offerings, suggests that their papers are suitable for dye inks, come in the large cut sheet sizes (13″ x 19″, 17″ x 22″ and A2 which is 16.5″ x 23.4″ – click here for paper sizes) which I prefer, and there are even profiles available for the glossy offerings specific to the HP DesignJet 30/90/130 dye printers. That is encouraging. As glossy print appearance and permanence are the very touchstones of the photographer’s craft, it’s worth the effort to find a long-term replacement for HP’s superb but discontinued Premium offerings. And I promise that is the last time I will use the words ‘superb’ and ‘HP’ in the same sentence.

For those photographers who revel in big prints and are trying to get the best print quality using the latest high megapixel sensors, high gloss surfaces are the answer. The quickest way to turn a 36mp sensor into a 6mp one is to use something ghastly like canvas paper.

Fade tests:

As with the matte papers, I will report back in three months on the extent of fading noted after daily all day exposure to bright sun:

Three matte and three glossy test strips in the sun.