Glossy paper for architecture portfolio on Epson SX510W

Discussion in 'Inkjet Paper' started by Mike91, Dec 7, 2016.

  1. Mike91

    Mike91 New Member

    Joined:
    Dec 2016
    Messages:
    1
    Location:
    Italy
    Hello, this is my first post, hope you can help me solve my issue.
    I'm printing an architecture portfolio. I've done all the drawings and pictures for it based on my Epson SX510W to check colors and width of lines because I thought they would be close enough to what would be printed at a photocopy shop where I usually print.
    I usually print on big formats (A1 and A2) and on hp plotters which are inkjet from what I can understand, therefore my prints on Epson SX510W where close enough as of colors and width, the quality was less but the overall prints where similar.
    Today I went and try to print on a laserjet and the drawings where awful, all the width of the lines and the colors where different and really bad. I was told that inkjets print better. I didn't think at an Epson SX510W would print better than a new laserjet at a photocopy shop but it looks like that.
    I went in various photocopy shop and everybody had laserjet printers for the A3 and A4 format, the only other choice was to print on a plotter and cut into A4 but I couldn't get the print on both sides of the paper.
    Therefore the only way I have left is to print with my Epson SX510W, I bought the only glossy paper at the store and it was the Mondi Glossy paper 135 gr.
    I tried it and with all the various printer settings (glossy, semi-glossy, ...) the prints where really bad especially on the very dark images: the black would appear a little green, the print was full of bubble like signs and would never dry.
    Therefore I tried with the epson premium glossy paper sample that I have and the print looks really good (except it looks a little purple with a certain light but I'm guessing that's a light problem because with the flash of my iphone it looked fine).
    So the epson premium glossy worked really well but I've seen that epson doesn't make glossy paper printable on both sides so which kind of paper would you suggest me?

    Sorry for the long post and the bad english but I really need to print this portfolio perfectly as my job application depends on the quality of it, thanks!
     
  2. Jeff

    Jeff Senior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 2006
    Messages:
    702
    Location:
    Michigan
    Hope your portfolio went well. I remember having a similar experience many many moons ago looking for good two sided inkjet paper at local sources and finding it difficult to source. Did you settle on something good?

    Red River has one option
    http://www.redrivercatalog.com/browse/double-sided-photo-inkjet-papers-2-sided.html

    I've also purchased before from IT Supplies
    https://www.itsupplies.com/
    (they also have samples)

    I believe I've run 2-sided from MOAB before
    http://moabpaper.com/

    http://www.atlex.com/paper-and-media/speciality/duo has some that I have not tried before

    Other brands to try include Canson Infinity, Innova, Inkpress and search for double sided, dual, and c2s and both gloss and photo papers.

    Lasers, being CMYK, will always have a more limited color reproduction range than inkjets using 6 to 12 colors, so that may be an issue. Inkjets almost always look better when the requirement is printing on photo gloss to my eye (at the drawback of cost per print of course.) Also could be color profiles -- when certain colors don't convert correctly from the colorspace you're working in to CMYK, doing a manual conversion to CMYK before printing can reduce unexpected shifts when printing. Also controling where rich black is used (black made of k with some amount of cmy to make a blacker black.) Could also be the difference between print resolution/halftone where thin lines curve to a very sharp discerning eye where there might be a tiny bit of improvement in tweaking rip halftone settings. In any case, sorry I didn't see this post before and hope you found some good options for your portfolio.
     
Loading...