That 1980s warm tone look

 

Sometimes I look at a print made using only a pigment black ink and wonder if it’s too warm.

Alongside one from the dye equivalent, it usually looks to be a little too brown - even for my taste and I like a warm print.

Of course, the pigment print can have the effect of making dye prints look too cold but that’s what I get for comparing them side-by-side.

Take the print above (the wee one sitting on the book), a photograph I took in the morning whilst on holiday a month ago. My first effort was with the dye black - I’ve got a wee A5 portfolio I’m working on and the rest were printed the same way - and it looked nice and atmospheric to my eye, probably about how it looked in real life.

Last night I decided for no particular reason to try a pigment print and really liked it - until the side-by-side with the dye version took place. I was convinced it was too warm so did what I’ve done in the past - dug out Fay Godwin’s Land book and compared my warm print with those in her book.

Of course, it’s very unlikely the reproductions in Land are identical in tone to Fay’s originals but I’ll bet they’re pretty close. Considerable effort would likely have been made to ensure that they met Fay’s own quality standards.

So what does a direct comparison between the book images and my pigment print show? They’re a fairly good match, I’d say. Not exactly the same but close enough that it doesn’t make a lot of difference. And that says to me that the pigment prints I’m getting from my Epson 1400 aren’t a million miles off what a good warm tone print made in the 1980s looked like. That’ll do.

The other thing I learned from this exercise was that Marrutt’s archival matt paper that I made the print on is very nice. It’s possibly a little “plain” for me as it’s very matt and very smooth whereas my usual velvet fine art has a soft texture to it which gives it a bit of character.

At £16 for 25 sheets of A4 archival matt it’s only 64p a sheet which is very reasonable. Plus it has a weight of 230 gsm, only a little thinner than Ilford’s MG FB Classic darkroom paper. 

Archival matt is also available coated on both sides at 76p per A4 sheet in the same weight. This would be ideal for DIY book projects with 50 images printable on an £18.95 25 sheet pack. Marrutt and Fotospeed used to do book covers with sprung hinges that opened up to accept pages and then snapped shut but I'm not sure if that's still a thing. It would be a great way of producing a book of original prints if it could be made to work.