Here is a comparision of different materials and how they look like:
(pBSF, Detailed White, Prime Grey)
- the polished material is the only one which offers some colors. Customers always remark that the material looks a little bit grainy. Although with polishing it becomes much better. But something is still missing. Some kind of varnish perhaps?
And as Batshebe says, some important colors are missing ....
- The White Detailed may do it's job, but looks always a little bit like a not finished product. Would be very interesting if the detailed would be available in other colors.
(if using the transparent one it does a good job, as long as material printing orientation fits to your item. I got transparent results but also milky results)
- The prime grey somehow does it's job. The surface looks smooth enough, the grey color looks like an end stadium.
Beside the material properties (which doesn't affect my customers) the most important topic is colors and plastic look alike.
For me shapeways service is great, but having a sufficiant material available in 5 of the most important colors would boost it by ten times.
So unfortunately for pictures and having the complete result in mind prime grey has so far the best results
and it's not offered by shapeways
Maybe a color palette for detailed would make it perfect but I even don't know if sufficiant materials exist. Maybe someone could answer this?
Woody64