Paper waving

[x64]

Good day everyone,
I have some questions regarding vertical waving of certain papers (in this case A4) with graphical art printed with my Epson Stylus 2100. I found the art in question an interesting case, because it has quite a big surface area of just yellow, cyan, magenta, dark blue and red. The latter area's causing the most intense waving in a vertical pattern with around 25mm between the waves. I've been trying a lot of different (cheap) CC papers that all cause this to happen, both with matte and gloss. The only non-waving results I had were with the Sihl glossy papers, that only caused ink pooling and bleed at higher densities, but no waving. Today I purchased some more 'premium' original Epson Archival Matte paper, and to my horror it came out just as wavy as the cheapest papers I experimented with.
It is clear to me that there is some kind of absorption issue with the papers, but what's breaking my head is that I initially started printed this artwork with some (+10yo unknown make) matte paper with a lower weight (below 170) that my dad once gave me, that printed out perfectly free of waves! Knowing him that definitely wasn't very premium or expensive, but almost definitely purchased in Germany at some computer fair. I've ran out and in search of a substitute I cannot seem to find one that prints comparably.
It is also important to note that I'm printing with dye inks instead of the original pigment inks, through Gutenprint on Linux. If I didn't have those wave-free results with the Sihl and unknown matte paper with the same parameters, I'd think the dye ink would be the cause. I've been experimenting with the general ink limit and density, but so far could not find a sweet spot between the absence of waves and correctly saturated colors. I've also noticed less waves when printing below 1440dpi.
I'm hoping someone more experienced could point me in a direction for some further reading or maybe I'm missing something obvious, before wasting even more paper and ink.
Regards,
x64

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

You are victim of an aggrevating effect caused by the paper you are printing on - it curls - it's the solvent of the ink getting into the paper base , and the paper curls when the paper is drying - the solvent is evaporating. You can find lots of comments in the forum if you search for 'cast coated paper' or 'resin coated paper' . papers vary very much in this respect - better off are resin coated - RC - papers , the paper base is sealed on both side by a very thin PE film - the paper base is a kind of sandwiched and the solvent cannot go into the paper base. But pract5ce shows that about every paper behaves somewhat different in this respect - even some cc papers stay flat. there was a sales action by the thrift store Action beginning of this year - that glossy paper just stays flat. That paper may still be available w/o action discount. Give it a try - it works with dye inks - not such much with pigment inks - the gloss is a kind of muted.
https://www.action.com/de-de/p/3203166/glanzendes-fotopapier-a4/
Or there is a 'Koala' photo paper via Amazon which as well stays flat
https://www.amazon.de/s?k=koala+photo+paper+a4&crid=1IGXNN217IFZR&sprefix=koala+photo+paper,aps,620&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_2_17
Again give it a try.
These papers are cc-papers which indicates that their gamut is typically smaller than the gamut of a resin coated paper, that's becoming visible when you create icc profiles for these papers.
The Sihl paper is not available anymore since quite a while, it had a pretty low ink limit which was causing problems with printer drivers in which you could not lower the ink limit.
Most of the papers sold as specialty papers - Fine Art - are not RC papers , they need to be framed and/or put behind glas or they curl otherwise - even vary with the ambient humidity.
I'm not familiar about the paper offerings in your country - it typically helps when you buy sample packs of their papers from several shops , this let you do comparative testing.

 

[x64]

Thank you for your detailed reply.

there was a sales action by the thrift store Action beginning of this year - that glossy paper just stays flat. That paper may still be available w/o action discount. Give it a try -

Interestingly enough, the Action paper is sold here throughout the year and gave me the worst results of them all in respect to the waving.

The Sihl paper is not available anymore since quite a while, it had a pretty low ink limit which was causing problems with printer drivers in which you could not lower the ink limit.

My experience with the Sihl paper reflects that, it seems to absorb less and stays flat no matter how much ink I drop on it, yet with a rather standard ink limit it starts pooling and bleeding. I get good results around 35% (0.65 in Gutenprint) reduction.

I'll do some more experiments with different parameters if you regard the Action paper as one that should stay flat. At 1.89 it's not eating my wallet anyway. It was already clear to me that the lower viscosity of the dye ink feeds more ink on the paper than what my printer expects, so I've been printing with a ink limit reduction of around 25% (0.75) by default. I found that around 70% (0.30) reduction all paper stays flat but it doesn't look appealing anymore.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

It's difficult to compare print output from different printers - running on different systems - Windows - Apple - and using non-standard software tike Gutenprint. There is an effect of saturation reversal - more ink does not give you more color saturation, a linearisation would be necessary to find the point just before the saturation reversal, but such tools are typically found only in RIP software.

The Action paper was run with an addtional discount over year-end

You may try as well a OEM paper with good performance - pretty wide gamut - the Canon PT-101 - Premium Plus Photo paper, that's more at the upper pricing range.

Papers curl like in this test

https://www.printerknowledge.com/th...-budget-level-glossy-papers.14865/post-129485

The Hayatec paper stays pretty flat as well

https://www.amazon.de/HAYATEC-hochg...084&sprefix=hayatec+paper,aps,105&sr=8-1&th=1

The problem is that no seller tells you how much a paper actually curls - it's up to you to test test test