tested Pictorio OHP against 3 others

[reinier_de_vlaam]

After the discussion in e previous thread I finally managed to get

hands of Pictorio OHP through Nova Darkroom in the UK (excellent and

quick)

 

Eagerly I tested it and I must say it is pretty good but a bit of a

disappointment after all the 'hurray' stories, but a clear

improvement to the local brand.

 

I compared it to a local brand transparency (Acco Nobo inkjet

transparrency), epson backlight and tmax 100 (which is base for the

test)

 

This is my impression

 

base fog blacks grey levels smoothness ruggedness

 

Acco ++ + +/- - +

 

Pictorio + +/++ + +/++ -

 

Backlight -- +/++ + +/- +

 

Tmax ++ ++ ++ ++ +

 

 

The Acco Nobo has a suprisingly low base fog, it's better than anu

other, yes even better than Tmax.

Acco has problems with grays (causing detail problems and the prints

turn out to be towards red, while epson/Pictorio have nice greys.

Also Acco isn't very smooth and shows speckels in the inklayer, while

Pictorio is almost as smooth as Tmax.

Pictorio has a clear blueish base fog but the blacks are pretty good.

They are just that bit darker than Acco

The main problem of backlight paper is the base fog, otherwise it

performs pretty well.

Main problem for Pictorio was that its very sensitive to damages. The

guiding wheels caused clear damages on the inklayer. This means I

have to adapt the printer, removing guiding wheels. I didn't have

this problem with Acco and much less with Epson.

 

Now I did not use pigment inks, but these are more for lasting colors

than more deep colors. It could make some difference thought. However

it will not impact things like base fog and ruggedness

 

Compared to a well developped (this is the main point) Tmax 100 all

have their problems. I found that pictorio performs pretty well and

will in many cases provide the result wanted, certainly better that

the Acco I used sofar. But for a full range from deep black to an

almost 0 base fog Tmax 100 outperforms all of them.

 

these are my personal findings, other opinions are allowed to exist ;-

)

[reinier_de_vlaam]

grrrr, this auto restructering is awfull

 

Ok, on a scale from one to 5 (translated a bit)

 

BASE FOG

 

Acco 5

 

Pictorio 3

 

Backlight 1

 

Tmax 4-5

 

BLACKS

 

Acco 3

 

Pictorio 4

 

Backlight 4

 

Tmax 5

 

GREY LEVELS

 

Acco 3

 

Pictorio 4

 

Backlight 4

 

Tmax 5

 

SMOOTHNESS (grain)

 

Acco 2

 

Pictorio 4

 

Backlight 3

 

Tmax 5

 

 

RUGGEDNESS (can't give any 5'es here ofcourse)

 

Acco 4

 

Pictorio 2

 

Backlight 4

 

Tmax 4

[joseph_wisniewski]

What browser are you using? Does it have an HTML editor?

<table style="text-align: left; width: 100%;" border="1" cellspacing="2"

cellpadding="2">

<tbody>

<tr>

<td style="vertical-align: top;">I don't<br>

</td>

<td style="vertical-align: top;"><br>

</td>

<td style="vertical-align: top;"><br>

</td>

<td style="vertical-align: top;"><br>

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td style="vertical-align: top;"><br>

</td>

<td style="vertical-align: top;">See a problem<br>

</td>

<td style="vertical-align: top;"><br>

</td>

<td style="vertical-align: top;"><br>

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td style="vertical-align: top;"><br>

</td>

<td style="vertical-align: top;"><br>

</td>

<td style="vertical-align: top;">With tables<br>

</td>

<td style="vertical-align: top;"><br>

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td style="vertical-align: top;"><br>

</td>

<td style="vertical-align: top;">On this site<br>

</td>

<td style="vertical-align: top;"><br>

</td>

<td style="vertical-align: top;">Seems pretty easy ;)<br>

</td>

</tr>

</tbody>

</table>

[joseph_wisniewski]

On the ruggedness issue. Remember, film dries slower than paper. There's no fiberous "paper" under the ink layer to pull down some moisture, so all the drying has to be from the top. Making the printer run slower will often cure roller problems. For the Epsons, that usually means using the highest possible resolution, and turning off "high speed" mode.

[reinier_de_vlaam]

Hi Joseph

 

Wow, how did you do that. I have a plain text field I enter my text in when doing in response.

 

Should I make a table in a HTML editor and then paste it in???

 

Reinier

[lex_jenkins]

Reinier - yeh, it's best to use an HTML editor. Whenever I need to do anything fancy, which is pretty rarely, I'll just use the editor that comes with Netscape, my preferred browser.

 

It's all pretty much point and click. You choose and/or type what you want, the editor generates the appropriate code. It's pretty much standard HTML that most sites will accept. Occasionally I'll have to delete some extraneous headers and footers that photo.net doesn't recognize (being a pretty old site with relatively ancient software by today's standards).

 

No idea about IE or other browsers' built-in HTML editors - don't use 'em. I use IE only occasionally when a site won't function correctly with Netscape.

[joseph_wisniewski]

Reinier, I did exactly what Lex said (except that I use Mozilla, which basically is Netscape, anyway).

[lex_jenkins]

Oh, yeh, I forgot to mention one last step:

 

In order for the code you've generated in the HTML generator to function with photo.net, you must copy the HTML code, not the preview page, from the HTML editor. The code page is easily recognized - it's full of tags such as <br>, <u>, </u>, etc., which are generally meaningless to photo.net until you've told photo.net to regard these tags as HTML code rather than plain text.

 

So cut and paste the page of HTML code into photo.net's "Answer" window. Then, in the little box labelled "The above text is:" choose "HTML". Then click on the "Submit" box. That should do it.

 

If you get an error message you'll just have to trim away a little of the header and possibly footer since, as I mentioned earlier, photo.net doesn't recognize some HTML.

[reinier_de_vlaam]

I tried to make a table in word and removed all junk (like head) but get a message that photo.net can't use certain tags because of mis-use. When I search for these tags, I can't find them in the doc I made.

 

 

-I have an extra comment on pictorio. I proves that the gray areas from 4 to 50% in Dan Burkholders test scale (using his curves) flatten out, while the ends of the scale have increased differences between steps. The difference between no curves and with curves is noticable, but not enough. Probably this can be solved with improved curves but it's clearly an area of concern.