Paper: Brands, Sources, Sizes

[roscoetuff]

I have to admit inkjet printing is fun. Beats the heck out of staring at screens. And especially beats the heck out of staring at screens if you can and do print big... and actually see all the stuff that's packed into the images.

Thinking out loud, this brings up the subject of papers and sizes. Gotta say this Baryta paper is very nice stuff. Stiff. Stands up and you can look at it standing on the keyboard next to the monitor and see if you really "got it" or not. Kind of works. All the rest about the paper's surely true. But this is kind of just there.

I'm a newby to this, but it's interesting the Red River Papers don't get much show when it comes to reviewing Fine Art Papers. Maybe it's just not an OEM (?), but a finisher of stock provided by others? Dunno. Are Canson, Hahnemuele, etc. necessarily "better" if they are? Not sure. But Red River does market, and they do a pretty decent job at making folks like me aware of their larger sized papers.
But the lack of 3rd party references that are more than anecdotal (website comments/"reviews"), who knows what to make without just giving it a try? Which I do.

Thing is, I'm in the middle of using some Hahnemuhle Baryta and checking B&H for larger sizes... there's not a lot of choice. Hahnemuhle's own site by contrast lists a lot of larger sizes - up to 17 X 25 I think. I'm sure the orders must not be frequent, but it surprises me and suggests the hardware folks probably aren't the best sources for disposable, relatively low margin items like these. Ditto for  Canson Infinity? Slightly better, but not much. Having gotten used to staying out of my car and having great stuff arrive at my door, I'm curious how folks are finding their fine art papers.... who they recommend as paper distributors?

Using this grade of paper is a real pleasure, but I suspect there's a point where the learning needs to shift to using it for finish printing rather than some of my "learning exercises". I haven't seen much written about pairing of papers - one for 'development" and another for 'finish production', but the idea is simply to have similar characteristics, but allow for lower cost while you work out the details. Maybe that's ridiculous? and nobody with experience does this? Possible. Possible it just sounds too costly for volume work? Probably. Yet for a relatively low volume "learning" amateur, maybe not unthinkable.

[Mark D Segal]

Regarding reviews of Red River papers, let me put it this way. Usually, paper branders or suppliers approach those in the community doing the reviews with the idea of reviewing their papers. Or a reviewer may have taken an interest in a particular paper and decided to review it. One way or another, if Red River seems under-represented in the reviews it doesn't necessarily mean there's anything inferior about their products; it simply means that the communication between Red River and the reviewers may not have been as active as perhaps it should be.

You are correct that there are many more papers out there than dealers stock - even the big ones; in fact there's so much it would be burdensome to carry so much inventory - it costs money and uses a lot of space. I think for the most part one can special-order types or sizes that you know exist but don't appear on dealer websites.

On the learning, you'll have a hard time getting decent matches between - let us call it "learning paper" and final product paper. On the whole, very cheap papers just don't render the same image as would high quality more expensive papers. To a considerable extent, you do get what you pay for. The best way of honing your print preparation skills is to use soft-proofing in your image editing application. If your profiles are good and your colour management set-up is satisfactory, the soft-proof on your display should give you a very good representation of what to expect out of the printer. Trial and error under soft proof on your display costs nothing but your time, and well worth the investment.

[DeanChriss]

I've found that with good profiles, soft proofing, and a reasonable light source for print viewing there is not a big jump from what's seen on a monitor to what's seen on paper. Since a monitor emits light and a print reflects it they can't be absolutely identical, but the differences are small and one learns how to interpret the monitor image. I do most of my printing on baryta papers, specifically Hahnemuhle/Ilford/Canson, which are all essentially the same. I have been going straight to my paper of choice, whether baryta or other, for many years. When that is not successful it is most often because I didn't live with the image on the monitor long enough to find and address all of the fine points that need addressing. In other words, operator error. Hard proofing the image and sticking it to a wall where I see it often might help with the that but it is not truly necessary.

When you try out any paper you're trying out both the paper and the profile you use with it. Having a way to make accurate profiles puts the papers on even ground and lets you see the difference between the papers. Downloaded profiles can vary greatly in quality and that can make it difficult or impossible to really evaluate the paper. When you find a combination that gives great results there's no reason to not use it, regardless of where it came from.

[roscoetuff]

Mark: Thanks for your input! Good news is that the new CaptureOne 10 actually has a "Soft Proof" view which I'm now using. C1 didn't have this earlier... per se, though some had written "C1 basically operates in 'soft proof mode all the time'. I'd say in some respects if that really was true earlier, it wasn't obvious, and it helps the ergonomics of software if the user interface employs a common idiom where possible, and to makes the user aware of processes that are taking place - so the user, rather than the software, can choose to manually control and/or select what processes are affecting an image...  or alternatively choose to allow default processing to take place. Not rocket science. But C1-10 at least seems to push this (at last) into a more explicit awareness.   

Bad news is that I find the relative darkness between a backlit screen and front illuminated paper means the biggest adjustment lies in the relative brightness between the two. And so far, soft-proofing hasn't cured that per se, but might if I can get the time to revisit of the setting selected in my Spyder5 re-calibration of the monitor. No question I've been complacent / negligent in not doing this so far... due underestimating the impact correct brightness will have.

That said, my "cheap" or "scratch" paper is Red River's Ultra 4.0 which is pretty decent and I've a fair amount on hand. Sure, it's not Fine Art paper with "no OBA's", and it's not Baryta either, but it's not a "good enough" but cheap xerox/hammermill knock-off copy paper either. But fairly, my first Hahnemuhle Baryta print didn't impress me largely 'cause I didn't know what to expect, and so "the buzz" had me expecting to say, "Wow". I didn't, but instead thought, "Well, it's kind of flat looking by comparison." But as I've gotten ImagePrint running, and my control has improved, the paper's started to impress me. First, I like the firmness, and the way a white border looks to add to the picture rather than detract. If you want a modest sized image on an 8-1/2 X 11 centered nicely with wide borders, Baryta really looks fantastic! Yet I suppose the difference is easier to see with a larger paper size. So I'm really really looking forward to that. Fact is, I originally purchased the smaller, 8-1/2 X 11 in order to make a couple of "Pinchbooks" of my travel shots. Of course, I was hoping to hear the names of some really good distributors for Hahnemuhle / Canson / Moab / etc.

Conversion of raw images to B&W really seems to demand climbing the learning curve of color management with C1-10 as we don't have luxury of LR's many add-ins and presets. I've probably learned more about this over the last two weeks since the new printer and software arrived than I'd learned in the last year. This is good! After the holidays, there'll be a lot more time to learn, too. Nevertheless, it's been fun running a number of experiments with changing this and that, and it's great to have the instant feedback (or nearly so) that printing offers as I think it really feeds the desire to learn to control (and improve) more and more. And it's here that the less-expensive than Baryta comes in handy. Though I've made less use of it than I should.

So as I've said before, thanks again for the push.

DeanChriss: Helpful to hear that Hahnemuhle/Ilford/Canson are more or less interchangeable. "Check!" Suppose that means the differences between top grade quality papers aren't typically significant at this point with these... and that's a good thing. Yet I'm sure to a few eyeballs... they really are really different.

All in all, I'd report that my set-up/workflow of trying to maintain (for now at least) a clear demarcation between image processing and printing... even to the point of using separate software for each... has the benefit of keeping things simple, and facilitating the identification of where the variables went off the rails. I haven't gotten it 100% configured yet, but we seem to be making quicker progress than perhaps we're otherwise entitled to expect. If I can push myself away from the Baryta bar for a while to use up the other papers, I think I'd probably use two papers nonetheless. I like the idea of pinchbooks... and I suppose Baryta's going to cut the pages you can fit by half. So a lesser paper would do. Otherwise though, I hear you.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!