Note: These comments have been superseded by Joel's Revised Comments. All of these tests were printed using the MIS Archival color ink set in a 4 color Epson 1160. These are Joel's words:

The MIS archival inks are a hybrid of dye and pigments. They are a pretty close match to OEM except that they have some but not all the benefits of straight dye inks on these mostly glossy papers. Another way of saying this is that the dyes cannot altogether mask the well-known problems of printing on glossy papers with pigment inks. In particular there is a kind of veil on some papers which are otherwise superb with straight OEM dye inks. This may be just an illusion or some limit of gamut or saturation.

The champs were Ilford Heavyweight Glossy and Ilford Heavyweight Semi-Matte. Of these I prefer the look of the Semi-Matte, which has an eggshell appearance and is very white. It reminds me a lot of the old Cibachrome Pearl surface, though if anything it is slightly more refined. Both papers print the best black of all the papers tested. They appear to have better saturation, despite my use of the Glossy Film setting on the 1160. This is the lightest setting used among all my test prints. They also present the sharpest image of all the papers tested. The only distraction is some reflection on black surfaces when viewed at an angle. No bronzing, however.

The MIS inks with Epson Photo Paper and Epson Heavyweight Matte are similar and very acceptable. There is a tendency to dullness, however, and since Profiler RGB was used for all the prints in this test, the papers don't seem to print a strong enough black to compete with the Ilford papers.

The Red River papers all had similar output with the MIS ink. Like the Epson papers, blacks are acceptable but somewhat weak. The Polar Gloss is the whitest of the papers, but certainly not whiter than Ilford. Whereas it seems very successful with straight OEM, the result with MIS is a bit veiled and soft. Premium Gloss in both 32 and 53 weights is very similar, as one would expect. They are less white than Polar Gloss. In some ways I like the Frio Gloss #50 as much as any Red River paper with this ink.

Finally, the Konica QP paper is very similar to the Red River Polar Gloss with the MIS ink. It is not as white, but the somewhat weak black and generally less-than-crisp imaging of the Konica QP is very similar to all the Red River glossy papers.

Another word about the MIS ink with all but the Ilford papers. One seems almost to lose the "advantage" of using a glossy paper with the MIS inks because the surface does not look quite as glossy in the way one might have hoped when the image is printed. I suspect this is simply because the ink does not penetrate under the glossy surface the way a straight dye ink does. Also, the ink does not seem to dry completely or dries so soft and so shallow that it is easily damaged. The Polar Gloss smudges and the surface gets damaged very easily even several days after printing. In the end, the result does not look much better than a print to a smooth, hard watercolor paper, and the condition of the print on Polar Gloss with this ink seems a lot more precarious. One is probably better off using Frio Gloss if one wants a Red River paper with MIS archival ink.

Based on this admittedly limited amount of testing, the Ilford papers will be my first choice. It is possible that one could tweak Profiler RGB to produce a stronger black and a little better saturation with all the other papers, but I have a thousand other forms of torture available to me. Now if the ink just holds up to Time and Nature. Joel

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