Hi Folks

New to the forum but I've been reading many helpful posting here. I'm wondering if I could get some advice from folks using the HPZ line of printers on good canvas and recommended coatings. I'm hoping to do giclees of my own art and a few artist friends and would love to save myself some problems in advance with some sound advice from others already into it.
I received samples of HPs Professional Matt canvas and hte image looked too soft for my liking. Now it could have been the image they chose but I'm thinking it was the canvas. I really want a canvas that can give me vivid color and crisp detail. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I actually ordered the HP Collector Satin based on its description but haven't seen output on it yet.

Thanks
Paul

Perhaps this very recent thread could help?

http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....rt=#entry320577

Cheers,
Bernard

I suspect it's the image. HP's professional matte canvas is surprisingly good. At least on my Z3100 it has a very good gamut and acceptable d-max; way better than HP's satin canvas or an Epson canvas I tried. The surface texture does tend to soften fine image detail a bit; but that's part of the charm of canvas.

Mac,

If gloss canvas is an option for your work, Innova has a new Ultra Glossy, water resistant canvas that has an Instant-Dry Microporous coating. It is marketed as a photographic canvas and will maintain the vivid color and detail you mention.

There's a whole different mojo to printing with canvas that with paper. To keep it short you have to guard against "printing down," you need to keep canvas prints very open and have lots of separation in the darker tones. Also you almost always want to print with Perceptual intent, since that seems to get a wider apparent gamut on art reproductions.

It is best to use a very fine weave to avoid having conflicts between the texture of the inkjet canvas and the original art media. A lot of canvases are deliberately coarse textured partly to hide digital artifacts for large blowups, but if you are working with high resolution originals that works against you. The finer weaves are very noticeably sharper when you have a very sharp original.

I know one well regarded giclee guy who recently started using Hahnemuhle Daguerre, a fine weave canvas with a very white surface (with optical brighteners I think) and excellent gamut. It actually doesn't have a super fine weave but the peaks and valleys are very shallow and not very noticeable. He's got a multi-thousand dollar automated profiling system and often generates new profiles when he gets a new shipment of canvas.

Got my printer all up and running and prints are wonderful on the sample roll of paper they sent. However I'm really disappointed with the HP Satin Canvas I ordered. I got a 44 inch roll of it to boot and I don't like it at all. The image looks grainy and flat compared to giclees I've ordered in the past. Guess I shouldn't have assumed HP media would render the best results with an HP printer. The texture and the sheen make the image hard to see.
Sorry for the rant but I'm really disappointed right now.

Cheers
MacGuiver

It's not your imagination; HP's "collector's satin canvas" is a lousy product. D-max is really poor, tonal separation in shadows mediocre, highlights are very warm, and as you note the surface sheen is annoying. You can get acceptable results with the occasional image, namely something that lives in the mid-tones & highlights and where a warm bias is okay...everything else will be a disappointment.

HP's professional matte canvas is way nicer; better detail, cleaner white, and a pretty decent gamut & D-max.

Here's a trick I found quite useful to see if some of HP's branded media were worth buying, after a few mistakes:
HP's canned profiles for the Z3100 (and I'm presuming the Z3200) are really good. Take the kind of image you like to print into Photoshop, and view it using softproof, choosing the profile for the medium you're considering. This will show you if its worth buying even a sample. The softproof for their satin canvas looks like crap for almost any type of image, and it's not lying!