I said I’d be back once I’d done some testing – so here I am! And the answer? Well – I’d say the overall experience has been resoundingly positive, though not without hiccups along the way…

As I said in the main review – part of Fotospeed’s service is to provide you with custom colour profiles if you buy their paper – a great service that would actually cost you more than the paper if done separately. The aim of this process is to provide you with a file which, when used in the print section of Photoshop, will match up the on-screen colours of a correctly calibrated monitor to the colours that come out on the final print. These profiles are specific to an ink/paper combination, as different combos result in different colour characteristics. I got my nice shiny (figuratively speaking) new colour profile from Ray of Fotospeed by email in the middle of last week. Unfortunately, I was away in Italy during that time, so didn’t get a chance to try it until Saturday. When I got home, I installed it. This is a simple process that just involves copying the file to the relevant folder on the Mac (or PC) to make it available as a profile option in Photoshop.

Anyway – I printed a few shots, and I must admit, the results were very nice. The colours seemed to match those on-screen closer than anything I’ve ever done before.

But… there was a problem…!

I was getting some very strange effects in the midtone areas. This was much more evident on mono shots. I got a strange sort of ‘bloom’ in midtone areas, which had the effect of causing these ares to take on a heavy blue tinge, and appear much lighter than they should have done. I contacted Ray of Fotospeed, who said he’d not seen anything like it before. Typical! I’m the first! Ah well. Ray suggested reprofiling – just send him another print and he’d sort out a new profile for me. Great – I’ll just send him a new print, and hopefully it’ll sort the issue.

So – I left it for a few days, and then went back to print the calibration chart again to send back to Ray. I still had the test print on the printer, and it had been a few days since I’d looked at it. I looked again and it seemed like the problem had gone away, or at least reduced a lot. Just to check, I printed out a new version, using the same settings, on the same sheet of paper, next to the old one.

I got these results (click to enlarge, and again to enlarge more for clarity)…

The print on the left is the three to four day old print that originally showed the bloom that is in the right-hand (15 minute old) print. As you can clearly see, the bloom around the hairline on the newer print seems to have gone on the older print.

I’ve come to the conclusion that these inks and papers must just take ages to settle once the print has been made. When I say ages, I mean 3 days or so, as when I looked at the print 24 hours after I made it, the blooming was definitely still there.

So – the verdict? Seems good! After the initial disappointment, the final print quality seems about as good as I’ll get out of my printer. Of course, there’s still a lot more testing to do, and I’ll keep the blog updated with any developments. Would I recommend it? Heartily. The money saving alone makes it worth it. Coupled with the convenience, and the addition of a free profiling if you use Fotospeed’s papers, it’s a bargain!

As a final test, I’ve printed one of my mono shots with a splash of colour and lots of graduation and midtones to give it a real test (click to enlarge)…

As you can see on the newly printed shot, there is a definite blue bloom in various parts of the image (particularly in the lightburst around the Times Square sign in the top left). I’ll be checking this print over the next few days, and I’m hoping that this one will follow the last, and the bloom will fade to leave a very nice print.

We’ll soon see!