By: Erik Vlietinck
Thu, May 10, 2007 - 9:06:00
Pros: 0

http://www.innovaart.com
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Innova is known for its digital fine art papers. The company won an award for most innovative digital paper in 2006. Its papers are acid-free, and archival quality. Especially the fine art papers are of a luscious nature. The photo papers are somewhat less attractive because there’s no really glossy type in the range, but of course attraction is a personal thing, so others might feel these glossy papers are better looking than the mainstream paper types.

Innova Digital Art sent me 7 sample boxes of paper. The photo papers included FibaPrint Ultra Smooth Gloss, White Gloss (F-type), Warmtone Gloss, and White Semi-Matte. The fine art papers included Cold Press Rough TExtured, Soft Textured, and Smooth Cotton Natural White. I tested all of these papers by first creating a RGB colour profile for them, and then later on a CMYK profile. I printed several large-gamut images on them, and I finalised my testing by printing real-world photos, both in colour and black and white. The printer used was once again the HP Photosmart Pro B9180.

Innova claims a very high dynamic range for its photo papers, combined with a large gamut. I can go short for the claim on dynamic range: it’s true. The deepness of the blacks you can achieve with Innova’s Glossy papers is enormous and considerably higher than what I’ve seen from HP’s glossy paper or even Perfect Proof paper.

The claim on gamut deserves a closer look. To say the photo papers support a large gamut has to be put into perspective. Let me first say that the Innova photo papers in general have an average-sized gamut, while the fine art papers show a relatively small colour gamut. However, for all of these papers the gamut is considerably larger in the dark areas than what I’ve seen with other papers.

Limited Gamut, Large Dynamic Range

For example, the F-Type FibaPrint White Gloss paper gamut extends a lot further in the very dark colours, which helps you keep detail in shadow areas. And indeed, I could see this for myself when I printed a photograph that has a very large dynamic range (without being a HDR image). This photo printed fine with HP glossy and High Gloss from PerfectProof, but it lost much of its detail in the darkest areas when printed onto these papers. This wasn’t the case when I printed that image on Innova’s photo papers. Quite on the contrary: the darkest areas were beautifully detailed and the whole photograph looked more radiant as a result.

The bad news is that some colours are less prominently present in the profiles that I made for these papers. For example, blue and skin tone colours are well balanced, but there is less green in the gamut. The result is that photographs of landscapes with much grass will more quickly give an out-of-gamut warning in Photoshop than the other papers such as those of HP and PerfectProof.

In black and white printing, green plays less of a role than the blues and skin tones, and of course the dynamic range. And here, Innova’s photo papers really shine. Shine is perhaps not the right word, because Innova’s Gloss isn’t gloss as I interpret this term. There’s a distinct texture in the glossy paper --even more distinct than there is in the semi-matte paper. The best way to describe it is to compare the texture to fabric. The Gloss papers look as if they’ve been made from long fibres. And perhaps this isn’t such a bad thing, either.

Although I do like glossy paper to be really glossy, like PerfectProof High-Gloss paper, the gloss of Innova’s photo papers has more character, and is therefore better suited for fine art printing. The large dynamic range, the gamut being skewed towards specific colours, the texture in the paper: it all looks like these papers were designed with art photography in mind --and more specifically: black and white art photography.

Glossy Paper?

To put it bluntly: I wouldn’t touch on Innova papers if I were a commercial photographer, but if I were to create art photography as well, I would love their F-Type, and for portraits their Warmtone Gloss!

Enough said about the photo papers. What about the Innova fine art papers? I compared Innova Soft Textured and Smooth Cotton Natural White to the HP Hanhemühle Smooth Fine Art paper (that won an award in 2006) and Cold Press Rough Textured to HP Hahnemühle’s Watercolor paper.

Starting with the latter, the texture of Innova’s Cold Press Rough Textured paper has what I can’t describe but a bit more character to it. Whereas Hahnemühle’s Watercolor paper is really a successful attempt to clone a real aquarelle paper to the digital world, Innova’s paper is more original, and with a rough texture that is clearly visible, yet not overwhelming.

I tested this paper by printing a Painter test file to it, and found the result particularly pleasing to the eye. The Innova Soft Textured paper is even more to my taste as its texture is much more subtle, and the paper feels good as well as having good colour and display characteristics.

But the star of the Innova papers that I tested was Smooth Cotton Natural White, in my opinion. This paper has a warm look and feel. It’s as if you would like to caress it. It looks smooth like velvet, and displays colours wonderfully well, but it is difficult to get right in terms of ICC profiles, and especially so when working with a RIP. I tested the paper with both the RGB profile for printing straight from Photoshop. The results were simply stunningly beautiful --better than Hahnemühle Smooth Fine Art if you ask me.