Harman Glossy FB AI - Green??

[Ed Richards]

Working through my first box of Harman Glossy FB AI. I have prints on various other papers laid out as a comparion. I love the surface, but the paper looks green. (11x17 box). Anyone else noticed this? Could it be a bad box?

In comparing this with Innova FibaPrint Ultra-Smooth Glossy, the Harman surface is a little smoother, but I have trouble seeing why the reviewer on LL found Harman wonderful and the Innova awful. Sitting on the table, they pretty close, except that the Harman is green.

[Kirk Gittings]

I made the prints of my last group show on the Innova (B&W) It is a fine paper. Not perfect but the best glossy paper for b&w that I had ever used. I have not had a chance to test the Harman yet. I have to wonder about testers that label a good paper awful. I wonder sometimes if they simply have a bad profile or even worse don't know what a good print is.

[Ed Richards]

I wonder about the variability of the paper lots. The Innova cut sheets I have - 11x17 - are so curled at the ends that I have to try to flatten them before I can print on them, but the paper you have used is fine. I have been corresponding with their customer service, but no help yet. A few other people have reported the same problem, but most do not.

Putting the color aside, I would pick the Harman as the better paper - smoother surface, great Dmax, and cheaper than Innova, but this must be a bad batch because I cannot see a reviewer gushing over slightly green paper.

[Peter Langham]

I have been testing the Harman for about a week and have been using the Innova papers. Under certain lights, the Harman does seem to appear slightly green compared to the Innova, and I think compared to Mulitgrade.
I still really like the Harman paper. It is sharper with better shadow detail. It will require different ink settings to get the color tones right. My dmax is about the same on both papers. When not being compared to Innova, I don't notice the color and it appears slightly creamy. There are rumors of a warm tone version coming out, and this may solve the problem.

As for the reviewer on LL, his first review was about the Innova F, not the ultra smooth gloss.

That reviewer is Richard Lohman, and having seen numerous platniums and ink jets by him, I can assure you that he knows what a good print is. Until now his prints have been on matte paper (am looking forward to seeing some on Harman), but he is a fine photographerm printer and by reputation an excellent educator. With that said, I don't agree with all his conclusions about the Innova papers

[Ed Richards]

I think I made it worse because the other papers on the table are are all cream - PhotoRag and PhotoRag BrightWhite.

[Brian Ellis]

I made my first few prints last night (Epson 3800) with the Harman glossy paper (8 1/2 x 11). I don't see that it's green. I don't have Innova to compare it with but I did put it side-by-side with some old darkroom prints made on Kodak Polymax Fine Art and with Moab Entrada Bright White matte paper and it didn't look green compared to them. So far I've only used the canned profile from the Harman web site (for the 3800 in my case). Is that what you used?

This is the first time in my 8 or so years of digital printing that I've even tried a glossy paper, everything up to now has been on matte, so I have no basis for comparison with other glossy or semi-gloss papers. But if someone likes a glossy paper that looks very very close to the old darkroom fiber base papers (to my eyes at least, I've never seen this "image resting below the surface" that others claim to see in traditional FB papers and that digital inks and papers supposedly lack) then this one is definitely worth a try. No metamerism, no bronzing, nice deep blacks, rich colors. I don't have a reflection densitometer but I'd guess dMax is over 2.0 (the new Epson glossy FB paper announced today to compete with Harman claims a dMax of 2.5, pretty amazing).

I'm going to use up this box of the Harman and see whether it grows on me. I hedge somewhat because I just don't know whether I like glossy paper any more, even one that closely resembles the darkroom FB papers I used in the old days. I really like the look and feel of matte papers for digital printing and I've never been a dMax freak, I subscribe to the Dick Arentz school of dMax which says that it doesn't have to be as black as possible, just black enough to be convincing (paraphrase).

[Ed Richards]

Brian,

I only do black and white, so I am using the AWB mode of the 3800 or the Imageprint profile of the paper. But I am talking about the color the paper itself, not the printing on it. I get the same look from the Innova, but it a tiny amount more of surface texture, and I like the slightly flatter look of the Harman. I am with you - I do not get see the "image resting below the surface" either and find the best glossy inkjet prints just fine for images that depend on a lot of Dmax.

[Brian Ellis]

"But I am talking about the color the paper itself, not the printing on it."

That's what I was talking about too (I thought, though my reference to the canned profile was confusing and should have been left out). I held the white margin (about an inch all around) of the Harman up against the white margin of the other two papers I mentioned and compared them both to look for the greenish effect and to see how close the Harman resembled the surface of the darkroom paper. So when I said I didn't see any greenish look I didn't mean the image itself, I meant the white margin of the paper looked white without any greenish hue or tint. Sorry not to have been more clear.

[Ed Richards]

Think I will try a different size and see if it is just a bad batch.

[tim atherton]

A bit of a soak in selenium toner will take out the greens.... OWait, that is real photo paper.

With aluminum in the coated surface won't this cause the paper to have problems in the future just as aluminum metal surfaces oxidize and lose their brightness?

I think alumina is aluminium oxide

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