- 325 gsm, brilliant white, high gloss paper
- 100% Alpha-Cellulose
- Extremely high dmax
I''ve tested more or less all the papers out there. I can use any paper I want to, as I print for large institutions collections and money is not a concern. Out of all the papers I''ve tried, Hahnemuhle Fine Art Baryta 325 and Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth 305 are 2 of my favorite papers to print on when all characteristics of a printing paper are taken into account.
Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique and Platine Fibre Rag are also beautiful papers, but some of these papers mark up very, very easily. Just running it though the printer marks it up...no matter how the platen is set. You can see this problem to varying degrees if you look at the edge you feed though the printer. If you have a rear feed, this may help with the problem. But it still does not help when it comes to handling a print. Always sleeve these delicate papers or they can get marred from just one showing.
If you use a gloss optimizer, it helps with scuff resistance with the images. But if you have wide white borders these areas can scuff up with just light handling. If you do a search for my name, you can see examples of the images I print. I work in BW as well as Color. And as an old dye transfer printer, I am very particular with color prints.
Ilford Gold Fibre Silk is another beautiful paper. But again, super delicate and the surface can be marred very easily. Also, the back of the Illford product is not receptive to printing, which is a must for me. Museo Silver Rag is another gorgeous paper. Had everything going for it. But the samples I received suffered from what looked like cotton seeds embedded in the surface. I wrote the company, but they never replied. Maybe I will give it another try as I would ''love to love'' this paper. But all samples I tested of the Museo were defective.
It is a pity some of these papers are so delicate. The Canson / Ilford / Museo products can beautifully replicate an air dried ''F'' surface print from back in the wet darkroom days. But I can''t just go by surface alone when I choose a digital printing paper. There are many different tests a paper must pass before I will adopt it. Before you invest in a shelf full of a problem paper give your paper these tests..
1) Smudge test.
After a couple of days drying, rub a corner of the print to see if the images smudges over into the white borders. If the ink smudges, give it a few weeks and retest in another corner. If it still smudges a few months later it fails the smudge test.
Note: When it comes to matte papers / matte black ink...if you rub hard enough, you can almost always get them to smudge. The way I run this test is with light to medium pressure. Some papers will smudge with very light rubbing and those are the ones that fail. Other papers need a lot of hard rubbing so this test is subjective. In any case, Hahnemuhle matte paper has excellent resistance when it comes to smudging.
2) Flake test.
Yes it is true if you have debris, hair or large particles of dust on the paper the ink will coat the debris and flake off leaving white spots on your print. But no matter how well you brush and blow some textured fine art papers before printing the ink will still flake off, just by light handling of the print.
To give a paper the flake test. I like to test dark areas of black and white prints done on matte papers. (There is usually no flake problem with glossy papers, but matte papers keep the pigment on the surface as opposed to the glossy papers that absorb the pigment or dye.) Rub vigorously with a thumb over the area to be flake tested. If small white specks show up, your paper has poor resistance to flaking.
This type of paper must be handled with gloves and put under glass quickly. You can try spraying with fine art fixative. But from my experience, even 6 light coats wont 100% fix the flake problem. If a paper wont pass the flake test 99.9% to 100%, without spraying, I wont use it.
3) Bronzing
Bronzing can be helped with the use if gloss optimizers or gloss additives. Printers that don''t offer gloss additives may have problems with bronzing with certain papers. And when you have burnt out white areas on a glossy paper, the white areas show up in a different sheen than the rest of the image areas printed.
Gloss optimizes will blend the sheen of the entire image to match. Hahnemuhle Fine Art Baryta is one of the best papers I''ve tested for use without a gloss optimizer that will still yield an image with low bronzing and even sheen. If you have lots of trouble with bronzing or with white areas being brunt out and reflecting differently, try matte papers.
With blacks and heavy shadows, sometimes they bronze out as well. give it a day or two to dry well. Bronzing is sometimes reduced. And if drying does not help and gloss optimizers do not help then your glossy paper has bronzing problems.
4) Scuff resistance.
Many papers look beautiful. But run the back of your finger nail over the un-printed and printed areas to see how the print holds up to scuffing. Matte prints can especially have a scuff problems due to the nature of the matte black ink. You can also get a clue as to scuff resistance be seeing if your printer scuffs the paper by grabbing the ends of the paper with the feed rollers and running the paper through the printer. Try different platen adjustments and the rear feed to help with this problem. If all adjustments scuff the paper where it is feeding through the rollers, then you paper rates poorly for scuff resistance.
Pretty much all the matte papers I''ve tested have poor scuff resistance with the blacks. But that is the nature of the matte black ink that can take on a gloss if it is burnished.
5) Curl test
Some papers will curl up right out of the box and as they run through the printer the edges catch the carriage and you will have problems. a high grade paper should lie flat and not have a curl to it. This is especially true if you plan to use a ''duo'' or 2 sided paper for book printing.
Good luck with finding a paper that will suit your needs.
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