Ad Terras Per Aspera

I’ve heard a few good things about Adorama’s ProJet Elite Inkjet Paper, a few people I know have started using it because it’s supposably very high quality archival type inkjet paper that reproduces colors great, and is cheaper than other similar brands.

In turn, they attempted to convert me to the cult of ProJet Elite, and I’ve gotten nothing but horrible results with my Canon i9900, which I reviewed not too long ago.

So far, I have tested only ProJet Elite Picture Rag Warm Tone 190gsm¹. It does reproduce colors semi-accurately, but it looks very faded, and blacks are a dark grey. Also, dark areas appear splotchy, and sometimes very light areas end up appearing bright white.

Tested vs Canon Photo Paper Pro² (glossy, but reproduces colors amazingly), ProJet Elite Picture Rag fails horribly. If you’re looking for a decent brand of thick matte paper, look elsewhere.

Please note, however, that this does not reflect on Adorama as a fine purveyor of photography goods in any way. I’ve never had problems with any of my orders with Adorama, and they often carry products cheaper than Amazon, and even carry products that Amazon doesn’t. I still recommend Adorama as a good place to shop… I just don’t recommend their paper.

_{[1]: In Photoshop CS2, with the printer set to Matte Photo Paper³, Quality 1, Auto halftoning, Print Type none, borderless printing on at the 2nd notch, and any options in the effects tab off; with Photoshop set to “Let Photoshop Decide” color handling, the “Canon i9900 elite warm tone” printer profile, and Perceptual rendering intent with black point compensation on.}

_{[2]: In Photoshop CS2, with the printer set to Photo Paper Pro, Quality 1, Auto halftoning, Print type none, borderless printing on at the 2nd notch, and any options in the effects tab off; with Photoshop set to “Let Photoshop Decide” color handling, the “Canon i9900 PR1″ printer profile, and Perceptual rendering intent with black point compensation on.}

_{[3]: The Matte Photo Paper setting produces better results than Other Photo Paper and Plain Paper with ProJet Elite Picture Rag.}

Update, February 7th 2006: I’ve now tried every combination of setting the printer driver to every media type, color adjustments with ICM and print type; and I’ve also tried changing settings various settings in Photoshop (color handling, rendering intent, and black point compensation).

There is simply no way to print good results on this paper using the Canon i9990 inkjet printer. If I rated products on a 5 star scale, Adorama ProJet Elite inkjet paper would get 0 stars.