[Alan Goldhammer Silver Member Posts: 31]

Papers & Media

on: June 23, 2023 at 10:26 am

Kudos to Mark for his well done review of the two Moab papers.  I have been printing on the natural paper for some years now and find it quite versatile.  I continue to be confused about the utility of M3 measurements for profiling.  There was a rather exhaustive debate over on LuLa just before I left with lots of people weighing in pro and con.  I don’t have an instrument capable of making M3 measurements so this ends up being academic and of course I rely on test prints along with spectro data to make sure that my profiles (all made with Argyll CMS) are satisfactory.  It also instructive that the original ink setting was unsatisfactory and Velvet Fine Art provided better results.  I remember Scott Martin covering this on his website some years ago and providing guidance and a test print to evaluate which setting might be best.

[Mark D Segal Silver Member Posts: 951]

Re: Moab Cold Press and Natural Review

Reply #1 on: June 23, 2023 at 10:59 am

Hi Alan, thanks for the comment, much appreciated.

Indeed I am totally familiar with both the Scott Martin materials (e.g. I use his most recent printer test image with his blessing) and the former discussions on LULA. After all is said and done, while we can (and I do) analyze what M3 profiling does to the representation of a grayscale or a colour palette, where I end-up is that there is no conclusive determination about whether it contributes value-added to a photograph; like in so much else, “it depends” – primarily on the paper, the character of the photo, the quality of the profile and the taste of the photographer. I look upon it as yet another tool in the toolset that has its place, depending. Apart from cases where colour accuracy is a critical requirement, I think the decision whether to use an M3 or an M0/M1/M2 profile should be based simply on visual assessment of what one prefers in the printed photo.

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