Kodak Endura Metallic Paper

[Dennis Murray]

Is anyone familiar with printing on this paper? How does it differ, color wise, from normal color papers? Does it work for people and skin tones?

[Daniel Buck]

metallic paper? From what I have seen, it gives the image a very odd look. Some printing places you can run a test for free, on a different type of paper. Might give that a try. whcc.com or mpix.com will probably do this for ya. I think it's alright for some images, but for most I think it would be over the top. no clue what it does to skin tones.

[Tiny Malone]

I have had a few things printed at Duggal at it is quite different. VERY saturated and a very wide tonal range are the result. What I have printed as a very limited tonal range so this translates nice. To my mind, I would say most regular imagery would turn out sorta like an over the top HDR image that starts to look like a cartoon....but I could be wrong about that. Duggal is the best I have ever used and you for sure get what you pay for with those guys.

[John Thawley]

Is anyone familiar with printing on this paper? How does it differ, color wise, from normal color papers? Does it work for people and skin tones?

I have used it extensively. My 2005 Boxed Set was done on Metallic and I did a three print Cadillac set called Heavy Metal on Endura Metallic.

It can tint the color images a bit. I would use it for portraits. In my boxed set, the Corvette images might cause you to take a second look... not necessarily bad or wrong... but a touch different. That said, though... the Dyson cars, the Miracle car, the ACEMCO Saleen.... they all looked spectacular.

Do you remember buying candy apple spray paint colors for plastic model cars? You'd put down a metallic base.. either silver or gold... then shoot the candy color over that. The Metallic is ALMOST like that. Not as drastic, of course... but a hint.

The Cadillac set was black and white. Oh my... VERY COOL. The grille on the CTS-V actually looked like actual metal.

With the right images, the paper is awesome.

JT

[Mike Ditz]

I'd like to see some portraits with that paper but I'd think it would be most effective with shots of metallic things, like cars. The "Flock of Zs" shot that I did, was printed as a 1x3 foot poster usinf the metallic paper. It looked gooood.

[Dennis Murray]

Thanks for all the comments. White House's incremental cost for the paper is about 40 cents if memory serves, so I might have to try it for half my portfolio (and have it also printed on normal paper and look at it side by side.)

I'm just looking for a little extra pop and impact.

One last question...did you vary your post processing at all, or go for the typical "look" used when printing?

[Britt McTammany]

I use printroom.com and they use silver halide ink on thise paper and the results are amazing, especially for cars.

[John Thawley]

I left my color space alone. And, as I said, the only image of mine that looked a bit (and I really do mean a bit) off was one of the prints of the yellow corvette. And... it was a sky shot. The blue sky went a touch "dirty"... the overall images just had a tiny hint of a bronze cast. The other images, 11 in all, were scary colorful. Very deep and very rich.

As I said, I'd be hesitant to do people or portraits.

Black and white...is killer.

JT

[John Swenson]

As I said, I'd be hesitant to do people or portraits.

Black and white...is killer.

Agreed.

Skin tones usually are oversaturated.
Blues & reds look awesome! (reds that you can't get with a normal c-print)
Yellows are tricky—they walk a fine line between green and orange
B&W is killer, though the highlights are lower than normal—a real Zone System look with a lot of midtone depth.

Attach the pofile of your working color space & have the lab convert it to their output profile.

[Erik Anderson]

I've printed a considerable amount of images on metallic using a variety of vendors. As mentioned, B&W is simply stunning and color automotive stuff just flat out pop. I just received three 30x40 posters that I opted to print on Metallic due to the size of the order and I'm so glad that I did.

Print your images on metallic and you won't be sorry!

[Wes Duenkel]

I've also used it quite a bit, and overall, I like it. I've found it helps to give the image a little more contrast than I would for a standard print. I attribute this to the top end of the spectrum being "silver" rather than "white." In other words, "whites" come out a little "silver-grey". In my opinion (and as many have suggested) B&W is the best use of this paper.

[Brent Smith]

I've used it one time so far. I went with a B&W image and it came out excellent. I tried a colored image, mainly red and brown, with less than satisfactory results. As suggested by others B&W is certainly the way to go.