( 1 reviews )
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Posted: May 12 2008
I use this Professional Matte Canvas almost daily in my print business. I am an art reproducer and photo printer. My customers demand only the finest materials and print quality. Most pieces I print are bound for fine art galleries throughout the world. I produce limited edition prints for internationally known painters as well as exhibition photographers. I have never had a complaint about this material. In fact, all I have ever received are compliments from the artists and galleries alike, telling me how much the art stands out above the rest. The Professional Matte Canvas has a wide color gamut. Of all the fine art materials I use, it has one of the widest. I print with a 12-color HP Z3100 44". If ever a printer will show the weaknesses of a material it would be with that printer. I have some great looking photo films that don't have as wide a color gamut as this material. I've printed color and B&W on this material and both look great. The d-max of the canvas is not as good as some of the glossy films I have but with a good luster-laminate it gets pretty close. The neat thing I found with using this matte material is that my finish is optional. After printing I can either leave it alone as a matte finish, or I can UV spray laminate it for glossy, luster, or semi-matte. No sense in buying different finish canvases when I can do it myself. I use SureGuard laminate spray. I used to buy the HP Collectors Satin Canvas but I have had nothing but problems with it. The texture of the canvas is so deep that I get little microscopic spots where no pigment exists. This is not so bad on a light image but for those that have rich blacks or large areas of darker tones, it stands out noticeably. For this reason I have completely stricken it from my supplies. (and yes I custom calibrated the material but still no change) One last note and I'll close-up. I recently compared a piece of this Professional Matte Canvas to another brand of canvas that boasted similar specs. It was an Inkpress brand canvas. The prints looked good on that Inkpress material but the one major area I noticed it was inferior was in the surface coating where the pigments are absorbed. When the canvas was stretched it quickly revealed spider webbing and cracking along the edges where the canvas was drawn tight over the stretcher bars. Most printmakers will laminate the print before stretching in order to avoid this, or they will simply not stretch it as tight as it should be. To me, this is a mark of inferiority. I can stretch this HP Professional Matte Canvas without laminating it and not get any cracks. I stretch my canvas to the point of getting a nice drum sound from it, as one should. The Inkpress canvas's receptive coating looked...well...cheap. It looked like a sprayed coating. The HP's coating looks like nothing. The canvas just looks super white and clean. This may not matter to most but for my audience they want art that looks like the price they pay for it and the HP Professional Matte Canvas never lets them down. I hope all this info helps you in your decisions.
