| RESULTS
One
image is a converted toned selenium image shot under soft light
providing a lot of gradients and the second is a very saturated
color photo with a lot of fine detail.
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"Splendid"
An old stove at Bannack Ghost Town
Montana
You may click on the image for an enlarged view
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I
first prepared the toned print and was surprised to see
that the B9180 can print these types of black and white
images with little difficulty. Since this is not a neutral
grayscale image it is often difficult to achieve a close
match and getting the tone of the image right. When I
soft proofed this photo I noticed a distinct shift in
the tone from the selenium to a more neutral tone. I
made a slight change to the color tone by applying an
adjustment curve in Photoshop and the image came back
to the selenium tone. Soft proofing the "Missionary
Baptist Church" image showed hardly any change so
I decided to leave it alone. |
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"Missionary
Baptist Church"
Cades Cove - Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee
Click
on the image for a larger view
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The hard part of doing this review is trying to somehow communicate
the quality of the prints online. There is no way to show the
reader how the prints come out since this is the part of the
process that is purely subjective and influenced by my experience
with other printers and preferences for certain types of paper.
Without the means to measure the color gamut of this printer
and the papers used I will talk a little bit about my perceptions
compared to my experience with Epson printers.
The output of the B9180 is on par with the current Epson line
using the Ultrachrome K3 inks. Compared to my own Epson 4000
using the older Ultrachrome inkset I do see a very slight edge
from the HP. This is to be expected since the 4000 is now two
generations behind the current Epson line.
I
printed the color image on the two HP photo papers and the
toned image
using the Hahnemüle fine art paper. As mentioned
earlier I have been printing on this printer for some time now
and aside from the first initial test prints where I was still
familiarizing myself with the HP print workflow I can say that
this printer produces outstanding results time after time. The
color tests prints showed a wonderful sharpness and fine detail.
Color was highly saturated and there is no banding whatsoever.
This inkjet printer shows no signs of abrupt gradation and would
compare favorably to a continuous tone print from say a Lightjet
chemical printer. As for the toned image I was extremely pleased
with the results. The B9180 easily handled the soft nuance of
the lighting of this image and matched the selenium tone on screen
perfectly. All the details are there even in the darkest shadows.
Again the tonal gradations are very smooth and the Hahn paper
is luxurious to the touch. This is a great combination when you
want to produce a fine art print.
I do not see any significant metamerism (color shifting under
different light sources) in any of the prints. There is a very
slight indication of gloss differential with the glossier satin
matt paper. To be fair I had to look at the print at a very obtuse,
raking angle to see any hint of it. In practice it is a non-issue
and if you plan to frame your prints rest assured you will never
see it.
The bottom line: I would not hesitate using this printer to
make prints of even the most problematic images. This printer
does an excellent job with anything you throw at it. If you follow
the simplified color managed workflow provided by the HP Photosmart
software you will have no difficulty producing beautiful gallery
quality prints. Thanks to the closed loop calibration feature
and the very accurate ICC paper profiles provided by HP it is
a snap.
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