photographic @ge - Glossy Photo Paper Comparison

Can you tell the difference?

In Issue 1 of photographic age, we played with our inkjet printers by running just about any kind of paper that was not made for ink jet printing through them. Surprisingly we had great results on just about every paper we tested. Of course this done with dye based inks using consumer grade printers. But since there are so very many of these printers in the hands of photographers, it seems only fitting that we now test print on photo glossy papers made specifically for ink jet printing.

In this comparison of papers we are reviewing:

Epson - Premium Glossy Photo
Kodak - Ultima Picture High Gloss
Jet Print Photo - Professional Photo Paper Superior Gloss
Staples - Professional Glossy Photo
HP - Premium Plus Glossy
Legion - Professional Photo Gloss
Ilford - Photo Glossy
Pictorico - Premium Photo Glossy
Ritz - Professional Photo Glossy

The papers in this test were all found on the shelves of various photo and office supply stores. From the price and the packaging they appear to be of Professional quality and range from 8 to 11 mil thick. But wait a minute... if the package said it was Amateur paper would it sell? Or does this mean that any paper that does not claim to be professional paper is of less quality? Let's get a file ready to print and find out for ourselves.

The Test Subjects

All of the papers in this test were bought at various stores and range in price from $8.99 to $19.99 for 15 to 20 sheets. Some have really cool packaging and some have pretty plain packaging. The reason I mention this is that we are consumers and a lot of companies spend a great deal of money on marketing research and how they package their products. Often it also reflects in the price of the product but not necessarily in the quality.

My first file to print is this image of a vintage Ford's radiator cap and grille. The image I used shown in the pop up window shows the spare tire cover to be black, the body a rich brown and the chrome to the right of the cap has a slight blue gray cast while the other side would be more on the yellow side. This is a 12 Mb RGB file printed from Photoshop.

Before I began testing the papers I first printed test strips to make sure the image on the screen would match the prints. On my particualr machine the EPSON standard profile actually yeilds more accurate results than the EPSON glossy photo profile. And with the driver set to photo realistic there was very little difference than when it was set on Color Sync in the color management set up. Repeated test strips were made and I had achieved a good matching set up ready to start testing.

The next image I tested was an 8 Mb RGB file that I printed from Photoshop to an Epson 1280 just as in the previous image. This image of my grandson has him wearing a vibrant red shirt, blue jeans and he has a slight pink cast for skin tones. This image was also on the borderline of being sharp and slightly soft. This way I could tell if the different papers were any sharper and softer than their counterparts.

I could also determine gray balance since the concrete floor is slightly on the tan side to the left and to the blue gray on his right. Also note the highlight on his sock is pure white and on the right side of his face it almost goes to white.

The third image in this test is a row of pastel colored homes in Savannah, Georgia. As you can see in this pop up window the fronts of the houses were actually covered in shade which will help determine the contrast values of the papers. Except for the bright patch of sun in the slightly pinkish bricks, the rest of the scene is in open shade. The first home is a bright pastel salmon color and the flag is a rich yellow.

This will be a difficult image to print because the lightest tint of blue will flatten the image to a slightly muddy look. But a nice high contrast paper should reproduce it even more vividly than it appears. Overall this image could have a very slight bit of blue removed from it, but I left it as is to see if the papers can handle the task without going flat.

For testing the papers vivid colors, this image of these brightly painted table and chairs should be quite the test. The dark area behind the chairs along the back is a rich dense black with fairly dense color in the chairs and table. This print will also test the papers ability to keep the ink from piling up on the surface.

This 25 Mb file also printed from Photoshop would round out my first series of test images. And now 36 prints later here are the results, even though when I first began this project I actually thought there would be no difference in the prints. Boy, was I ever wrong!

Under The Loupe

Since these papers are between 8 and 11 mils thick, stability will not be an issue. But what I will look for is mainly how well the image matches the monitor as for its contrast, sharpness, color cast, ink piling, drying time, fade resistance, and gloss.

Due to the variations in the prints being very minimal, it wouldn't be possible to accurately show you the results on the web.I will do my best to describe what variations I have found from these nine glossy photo papers.

All of the prints were acceptable to the typical consumer, but to the trained eye and the scrutinizing photographer only a couple passed the test. I would guess that most of the papers could be calibrated with the monitor a bit more to match. This is a good case of why you should stick to one system and not switch papers every time you buy a new pack. You will get much more consistent results if you calibrate your monitor and stick with the paper you like.

So you may be thinking that this test is not really accurate if I didn't calibrate each paper to my screen or actually my screen to match the paper. I had these same test images printed by a commercial print house and on another home computer on my paper with resulting images that actually matched my benchmark image very closely. To see how each of these papers performed see the test scores.