If you’re printing from home, you’ll
need a high-quality paper to achieve fantastic results. But which do you choose
and how can you get the best prints possible? We take a look at six paper
choices with an attractive luster finish.
Fotospeed platinum baryta
Price: $85
Weight: 300gsm
ICC profile: www.fotospeed.com
Fotospeed
platinum Baryta
If you crave a traditional darkroom finish
to your prints, you’ll want to look at a Baryta media such as Fotospeed’s
Platinum Baryta paper.
For those unfamiliar with the word Baryta,
it stands for barium-sulphate, a clay-like material that’s used as a coating to
hold a chemical emulsion and provide a smooth, reflective finish that's in
between matt and gloss. The finish of Baryta can be described as being similar
to luster, though it’s frequently used with optical brighteners to increase the
whiteness of the media and extend its tonal range.
This paper produces smooth transitions
between delicate highlights and the deepest blacks in an image, and is suitable
with all commercial thermal and piezo water-based printers, such as Epson,
Canon, HP and Kodak. The paper density is 300gsm and it’s available in many
sizes from A4 to A2, including 15m rolls. Expect an A3+ box of 20 sheets to cost
around $85 ($4 a sheet) and Fotospeed offers an ICC profile for Epson, Canon
and Fotospeed inks directly from its website.
Canson infinity baryta photo-graphique
Price: $98.9
Weight: 310gsm
ICC profile: vvww.canson-infinity.com
Canson
infinity baryta photo-graphique
Just like Fotospeed’s Platinum Baryta
media, Canson Infinity’s Baryta Photographique paper features a barium-sulphate
coating to give it the look and aesthetics of an original darkroom print. The
paper is acid-free to avoid degradation from its surroundings and is also
internally buffered to resist gas fading and maximize the longevity of your
work. Adding to this, it features optical brightening agents to increase the
whiteness of the media and is optimized for pigmented inks.
The big advantage is the speed at which ink
dries on the surface. Prints are ready to touch as soon as they land on the
print tray, so there’s no frustrating waiting period before you can frame or
mount your work. With impressive control in the darkest shadows of our test
prints, it’s complementary to black and white photography, as well as color.
Thicker than Fotospeed’s Baryta paper, it comes in sizes from A4 to A2 and
rolls for large format printers. A box of A3+ (25 sheets) will set you back
$98.9 ($3.9 a sheet) and an ICC profile is available to download.
Permajet Oyster 271
Price: $45.6
Weight: 271 gsm
ICC profile: www.permajet.com
Permajet
Oyster 271
PermaJet’s Oyster 271 paper stock has a
subtle luster finish and is claimed to be one of the whitest surfaced papers on
the market today. It’s a resin-coated media, which brags Permajet’s advanced
multi-layer technology that features a UV protective microporous super coating
to give it a high degree of water and fade resistance.
Suitable for use with dye and pigment inks,
as well as color and black and white images, the paper works out slightly
thinner than some of the other media in this six-pack group. It has a base
weight of 271gsm and as with all pearl and luster types of finish, the printing
side is identified by moistening the edge of the paper. The printing side will
appear slightly sticky when moisture is applied, but provided you keep the
paper in the box as it’s supplied, you’ll know the printing side faces up out
of the box. It’s offered in sizes from 6x4in to A2, with 30m rolls available
too. A box of A3+ (25 sheets) costs $45.6, so each sheet is worth $1.8. An ICC
profile is available to download, but you’ll need to sign up to access it.
Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl
Price: $45.6
Weight: 290gsm
ICC profile: vwwv.ilfqrd.com
Ilfdrd
Galerie Smooth Pearl
This smooth pearl paper falls into Ilford's
Galerie Prestige range and has a similar finish to PermaJet’s Oyster 271 media.
The key difference is its base weight. It’s
fractionally thicker, but is also available in 310gsm if you’d prefer. It
features Ilford’s latest Nanoporous coating that's intended to produce prints
with greater clarity, better sharpness and an excellent color gamut. Ilford
recommends the best results will be obtained with pigment inks, though it’s
suitable for use with both high-quality dye- and pigment-based inkjet printers;
and it has the advantage of being instant drying, which we discovered when
running out our test prints.
In the hand this resin-coated paper has an
extremely smooth feel. It’s easy to tell which is the printable side and as
with most papers, the printable side is face up when you open the box. It’s
available in sizes from 6x4in to A2, and rolls for large format printers are
also available. A box of 25 sheets in the A3+ size costs $45.6, equal to $1.8
per sheet. As we discovered, the ICC profile is also quick and easy to
download.
Ilford Galerie Luster Duo
Price: $60.9
Weight: 280gsm
ICC profile:www.ilford.com
Ilford
Galerie Luster Duo
Ilford’s Smooth Luster Duo paper shares
likenesses to its Smooth Pearl media. It’s in the same Galerie Prestige range
and it has a similar base weight of 280gsm.
The main difference between this media and
others is that it’s double-sided. This makes it suitable for many different
purposes, such as saving the hassle of printing two sheets when mounting work
within transparent portfolio sleeves. What’s more, it’s a paper that could be
good for wedding albums or premium invitations, but it won’t give you the same
durable feel as the thicker Baryta papers offered by Fotospeed and Canson. The
finish of the paper is to an extremely high standard, and it’s capable of
producing excellent levels of detail in dark shadowed areas, with impressive
control in the brightest highlights too.
Created for Epson, Canon and HP inkjet
printers, it's available in three different sizes - A4, A3+ and 12x12in. If you
opt for a box of A3+ you’ll get 25 sheets in a pack for $60.9, which works out
at $2.4 a sheet. An ICC profile is also made available.
Epson Premium Luster
Price: $44.1
Weight: 260gsm
ICC profile: wvwv.epsqn.com
Epson
Premium Luster
Epson’s Premium Luster media falls into its
professional paper range, and has a base weight of 240gsm, making it noticeably
thinner than some other papers in this roundup. Though it’s not as durable as
300gsm or 310gsm papers, ink doesn’t bleed when it comes in contact with water.
Just like all of the other media we’ve
tested, the ink was dry to touch straight after printing, but Epson does
recommend that 24 hours are given before the ink is cured and durable.
Suitable for use with Archival, UltraChrome
and dye Epson inks, the paper produced excellent colour reproduction. A
comparison with our other prints, however, revealed the paper didn’t retain as
much detail in the darkest shadows, although the detail in the highlights was
comparable. It’s available in sizes from A4 to A2, with various rolls offered
for large format printers. If you’re after A3+, this is usually sold in
100-sheet boxes for $176.6, working out at $1.7 a sheet, or $44.1 for 25
sheets. Those using an Epson printer will find the profile is already
pre-installed and ready to use from the profile list.
ICC Profile
If you’re looking to get the very best
results from your printer, ink and paper combination, you’ll want to use an ICC
profile. If you haven’t heard of this before, it’s data that provides a way to
ensure consistent color and accurate reproduction when producing prints.
ICC profiles were created by a consortium
of companies that wanted to achieve consistent and accurate color across input
and output devices, and most paper manufacturers offer a list of several
profiles, which are individually tailored for the most popular printers. Once
you’ve downloaded an ICC profile it needs to be correctly installed on your
computer before it’s ready to be used with imaging software such as Photoshop.
For Windows users, ICC profiles can be dragged to the desktop before right
clicking on the icon and choosing install. Mac users need to drag and drop the
profile into the correct profiles folder, by going to Library, selecting Color
Sync and then clicking on Profiles.
When your ICC profile is installed, you’ll
need to select Photoshop Manages Colors from under the Color Handling options
in the print dialogue and then choose your profile from the printer profile
list. More information on how ICC profiles are used can be found online at www.
whatdigitalcamera.com
