By Jon Canfield

Because I regularly cover new paper options for trade publications and have an intense interest in printing for personal and professional reasons, I’m excited about the number of new surfaces we have to print on. It seems that every month brings one or more new options, all of which are promoted as the best thing since ink was invented.

This embarrassment of riches isn’t without its drawbacks. We’re all striving for the ultimate in quality with our prints, whether they’re going on our own walls or will be hanging in a prestigious gallery for thousands to enjoy. Just as with your camera or your printer, it takes time to learn how to get the most from a particular paper. Some papers are better for black-and-white than color work; some hold ink better and can produce denser blacks. And then there is the issue of paper white: Do you want a warm, cool or neutral tone?

Just as in the emulsion film world, it takes time to really know how the paper will respond to your needs. You might carry around a couple of different films, but you probably wouldn’t keep 10 or 12 choices in your bag. It would just be too much work to really know them all well.

If you’re constantly switching to new media at every opportunity, you’ll never have the time to really learn how each paper responds to different subject matter and display conditions.

I’m not suggesting that you should find a single paper and use only that. But I am recommending that you find one paper in each type of surface that you use, then try to really learn how your work presents itself on that paper. 

For example, I love the baryta papers for black-and-white work. The traditional darkroom look and feel is ideal for many of my prints.  Quite a few choices exist in baryta papers, and to be honest, any one of them would be just fine.

But, I don’t want to mix them up and print randomly. Nor do I want to invest the time to learn how a dozen different papers react to my printing.

My approach is to use a standard test image for each new paper I test, so I can have a baseline for comparison. From this, I’ve narrowed down my baryta printing to two surfaces – HP Baryte Satin Art Paper and Hahnemuhle FineArt Baryta, giving me warm and bright-white papers.

Of course, I still look at new media when it comes out. If it looks promising, I’ll do the test printing and then try more in-depth printing to compare against my current standards. If I find one that I like better, I’ll take the time to learn the ins and outs before replacing one of my current choices. After all, experimenting is part of the fun. But in the end, we simply want perfection.