In addition to my colour test target, this studio shot was set up after taking the shot of the paper boxes. Lighting was carefully adjusted to provide some very subtle gradations in a perfectly neutral black shadow area (140cm octagonal softbox on Elinchrom BXRi 500 head providing a large soft source behind the subject to the right, and a head with a 60cm Portalite softbox front left). The Tecco papers on their first prints using downloaded off-the-shelf ICC profiles were closely matched and agreed with the original on screen.
keep improving and this is one of the best. Making colour or monochrome prints proved ef- fortless.
The even heavier 330gs Gal- lery Board deserves the ‘board’ title because of its weight. It prints using Epson Velvet Fine Art settings and can be con- sidered an equivalent, but the paper grain has a definite ’long grain’ pattern not the almost symmetrical texture of the Epson paper. On our A4 samples, the grain texture ran length- wise. This is a warm white paper which prints to good contrast despite using matte not gloss black, and reveals extremely fine detail. d-Max is reasonable. All the three Tecco papers were well-packed with a clear instruction sheet for current Epson and HP printers. Profiles can be downloaded from:
www.tecco.de It’s a German paper, and from deals on the website has a close connection with Nik Software. The website is more
Test prints after a day’s drying time, on the Epson 3800 printer. First- off prints with the downloaded profile were entirely satisfactory.
than a touch Germanic even in its English version, and each profile must be downloaded separately, coming with a PDF instruction sheet for printing. making the zip files over 1 megabyte per paper. The data size of the profiles – 1.3MB ex- tracted – indicates they are very thoroughly created. I would not feel any need to make custom profiles, based on examination of the output under a Colour Confidence GrafiLite ‘TrueColor’ desk light which I use for all print evaluation. This light also matches the brightness at which awards and qualifications entry prints are judged by MPA. It’s amazing how much detail it re- veals in the shadows compared to ordinary office room lighting. For the user, much will de- pend on the prices you can get Tecco papers and the formats to suit your workflow. Technically, these three as tested simply can’t be faulted. – David Kilpatrick
Á MASTER PHOTOGRAPHY 31
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