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Re: Xerox transfer et al
FotoDave@aol.com wrote:
>
> > > Check with the Wilhelm Web page cited in a previous message. He has done
> > > extensive testing on all these materials.
>
> Frankly, nowadays I don't know how to read/interprete Wilhelm anymore. His
> research is supposed to be an independent research, but if you go to his Web
> site now, on the front page there is an article by one of his workers, and
> the person is also a "co-owner of a fine-art printing and publishing
> company." The article is about the "test???" of a particular ink used by this
> printing company. When you get into a situation like this, it is hard to read
> much useful information and often time marketing is subtly included.
>
> If you download and read the article, you'll know what I mean. It is quite
> typical of this type of articles.
I did download and read this article, and while I agree with you in
general that sometimes research and marketing get confounded, and while
I think I'm pretty good at spotting questionable research, since I have
considerable expertise in research methods and data interpretation, I'm
not seeing what you're seeing here. After reading your analysis, I
downloaded the article fully prepared to be disappointed in Wilhelm, to
be persuaded that they have compromised their stance on independence
after all, but to my surprise, instead of an article trying to sell
something on the basis of questionable "tests", I found a reasoned
description of a process of matching an inkset to a paper to come up
with a combination that had both stability and crispness and the ability
to render very strong colors accurately. That they went back to the
drawing board after getting tests that weren't encouraging argues
against the idea that they were trying to put something over on anyone.
That they finally achieved their objective and were excited about it
could be construed as "marketing" but since the article is likely to be
read not by potential clients of the printing house but by the writer's
competitors, in other words other owners of Iris equipment who do the
same kind of printing, it's hard to see how the writer is benefitting
from publishing the article. Now if you could show me evidence that the
writer gets a kickback from sale of the inksets, that would be something
else.
what you termed a disclaimer at the end was simply a short rephrase of
their research results, to the effect that generalizations about the
stability of inksets are useless without knowing what paper they are
printed on, which was the whole point of the paper.
I don't want to pick a fight with anyone, and I don't have any
connection with Wilhelm, but your reading of this article was so
different from mine I thought folks who won't take the time to read the
article themselves should be aware that it doesn't look to everyone the
way it looks to you. I have been impressed in the past with Wilhelm's
scientific approach to testing and with their scrupulous stance on
independence. I don't see anything in this article that undermines that.
My 2cents.
Katharine Thayer