What's your favorite paper (matte) for color printing?

I've been printing on Moab Entrada for 4-5 years and have been very pleased overall. Occasionally there seems to be a little flaking, even though I carefully brush it before printing. As well as I like Entrada, I know there's been some new papers developed in the last few years that might be better in terms of gamut and Dmax. I print 95% in color, and prefer matte paper, so please limit your suggestions to that arena. Thanks in advance.

Bill, I have been using Breathing Color's matte papers for a few years and they are: Optica 1, very smooth and very good dynamic range, 300 gsm. The only drawback is it scuffs/scratches easily.
Elegance Velvet Platinum, it's 100% cotton rag. 310 gsm, good dynamic range and similar texture to Epson Velvet Fine Art.
Breathing Color has trial rolls 20' long for about half price.

I am switching almost everything over to Breathing Color and I have been very happy with everything I have received from them. Their OPtica ONe and 600 MT are both beautiful papers. http://www.breathingcolor.com/action/bc_shop/122/

I have only tried gloss, but I am a big fan of the Harman Photo Barytas

http://www.harman-inkjet.com/products/p ... RYTA+%20FB

I think the question was about a matte fine art type paper so I'll respond on that note. The breathing color optica and 600mt should be something one should look at especially for cost reasons with their discounts on quantity purchases at the 3-10-40 item purchase level. Check out their shipping boxes, fir stretcher bars, canvox and pavox systems, as well as the canvas and laminate products. That being said the optica and 600 MT both use optical brighteners, but in the case of the optica, they are of such a good quality that the paper passes the 100 year blue wool test and is certified archival. It's also 100% cotton and a very nice heavy weight of 300. The 600 MT is not certified archival and is more an economy paper but not really IMO as it seems to fill the gap between economy and archival. Very affordable. Gamut wise both are very close to the other matt papers out there of good top quality.

For getting the very most out of a matt paper, the epson hot press bright and natural papers are quite awesome. They both have about the best d-max I have seen on any matt and the detail produced on them is incredible. I love this paper--but to be honest it's expensive, and if your pictures do not demand the cutting edge, then other stuff like BC's stuff are way more than adequate. And how much and how quickly the hot press bright version's optical brighteners will hold up is an unknown right now. So beware.

A check on the Aardenburg site would give some further insight on a lot of papers you may be looking at. http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/accel ... tests.html

Checking the hot press bright they are showing no degradation of colors as of 50 megalux hours for the 11880 and the 9900 printers using the HDR epson inksets. Next published testing update will be on 5/30/11 (9900)and might shed some light on things.

The optica rates 53-100+ on an epson 4880 using the oem inks. This means after 53 megalux hours the weakest 10% of colors start showing some changes(negligible to barely) and the 100+ means that color fading across the color board has not been reached at more than one hundred megalux hours of testing.

This might be more tech than some want to be involved with, but it's worth knowing if that paper your looking at will stay as you printed it at least for a reasonable amount of time. Red river papers as one would expect are not doing so well in testing, and one paper that otherwise is awesome--the premier art generations alise bright white are showing low numbers, but the tests were not done on the same printer and inks as above, so it's not possible to be apples to apples on that paper. The inksets and printers, plus use of a rip, all make a difference, but one can certainly filter out those papers that are not acceptable to them generally if the numbers look real low and low on different inksets and printers.

Download document AaI_2009_o118_TA-01,pdf from this page http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/documents.html to understand megalux hours in relation to years of display life.


Paul

Thanks Paul for some very useful information.

To add a little footnote here I thought I would mention that Breathing Colors line of papers are going to get an upgrade using their newest coating technologies that render ink dots with less spread, so the dots wil be more precise and dense. This will give significant better Dmax, color gamut, and detail definition. They might be the best papers out there when it happens--sometime before the years end I'm informed.

The 600mt, even though not rated as archival on the site in the blue wool test, actually is made of the same basic stuff as the optica and therefore would perform as that paper for light fastness. They just do not feel it's necessary to flip the coin to have that one tested too. So the 600mt should work great archivally now as is now similar to the optica for those who love the cold press look, and even better when version II comes out.

In color think I'm showing a LAB black value of 17 and a white value of 98 for Optica, 16 and 96 for epson velvet fine art, 15 and 97 for epson hot press bright white, 18 and 97 for moab entrada bright white.

A comparison with a glossy paper--3 and 96 for epson's exhibition fiber and 5 and 96 for Breathing color's Vibrance Rag.

All numbers from an epson 9900 and oem HDR inkset.

Judging by what BC's improvements did for their canvases on the new Lyve and Crystaline lines, I would expect to see somewhere between a 5 and 10 % improvement on the d max of the yet to be papers. The photo black papers will also get the upgrades.

Paul

Hahnemuhle German Etching Paper

I don't print a lot in matte, but when I do I use Hahnamuhle photo rag, I've been quite happy with the results. It's warm tone paper and is quite a solid heavy paper and the archival quality is excellent being a cotton rag paper. If you like a whiter substrate, the matte made by Museo, portfolio rag has similar properties and is a bit smoother. Can't say I have noticed flaking with the photo rag. All these are designed for pigment printers.

If you really want gamut and Dmax, a paper that takes Photo black rather than matte black ink is worth thinking about. Museo silver rag was the first of these, they are designed to look like fibre base darkroom paper with air dried F surface. Others in this group would include Ilford's Gold Fibre Silk and hahnemuhle fine art pearl. There's only so much you can with Dmax and gamut in a fully matte paper. They really do provide quite a classy looking product as opposed to the plastic gloss look that came from plastic coated inkjet papers, and have only come into their own in the last 3-4 years. This is part of the reason why matte papers became so popular with inkjet printing.

Thanks Chris. I've considered using the Ilford Gold Fibre Silk. I ordered a sample from West Coast Imaging but the sent the wrong paper sample so I still haven't actually seen a sample of it yet.

Bill, they sell a 10 sheet pack as a trial size in 8.5 x 11, I ordered that first up before getting the sizes I wanted, It's my favourite paper thee days. B&H have it for $12.34:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/5 ... _Silk.html

You can download profiles form the Ilford website for a trial, but a custom profile helps you get the most out of your paper.