recommendations for matte / fine art papers for Epson r2400

[DavidF]

I'm making photo prints for sale in a gallery. I'm looking for
recommendations and anything people can tell me about which matte
papers they use and like. So far, I'm looking at:

Epson Enhanced Matte
Epson Watercolor Radiant White
Epson UltraSmooth Fine Art
Moab Entrada Natural
Hanamuhle Photo Rag.


I'm leaning towards the first two Epson papers because I have print life numbers for them and they are reasonably priced. Also, maybe the Hanemuhle, but it is much more expensive.

Any thoughts or experience is appreciated.

[stewartsmith]

Check out Innova and Lyson as well, be warned they are a little bit on the expensive side.

I use paper from a company called Ilford, their Galerie Range, for my best work and it is pretty good.

[Landis]

I'm not familiar with the Moab paper but have used all the others with great results. I'm a firm believer that you cannot standardize on one single paper, simply because some subjects look better on different papers. I would have you add to your list the Epson Textured Fine Art Paper as an excellent paper for certain subjects. Just get a small box of letter size of each of those and try them to see which is best to your liking. You won't know until you see it for yourself.

[DavidF]

Thanks all. Landis, I have samples of the Hahnemuhle PhotoRag and Epson Ultrasmooth Fine Art papers which I'll be trying out. I also have sheets of the Moab Entrada Natural. Additionally, I,m getting samples of inkjetart.com Museum Digital Fine Art paper and Museo II paper from Crane. I think that's a pretty good range to start with, considering any that I like I'll need to get profiles for.

If you live in the US, you might want to check out Moab paper's Entrada line. They are reasonably priced and have gotten good reviews.

David.

[Landis]

Thanks, but I have enough papers to play with for now. The more differnt papers you use, the more complicated it is to keep track of things. I need to nail down all these first. I'm really consentrating on my B&W printing right now with my ImagePrint RIP. This is turning out to be a bigger project than I thought. Ideally, I would like to have another large format printer dedicated to only B&W printing, but that isn't going to happen any time soon.

[DavidF]

The more differnt papers you use, the more complicated it is to keep track of things.

Yep, I agree. If you can, tell me your three or four favorite fine art / matte / watercolor papers right now, that I could try with my Epson 2400.

Thanks, d.

[Landis]

#1 - Epson Enhanced Matte
#2 - Epson Velvet Fine Art - this is really the same as the Somerset Velvet and wonderful for B&W
#3 - Epson Textured Fine Art

I probably do 75% of my printing on Enhanced Matt paper.