Semi Matte Paper or Textured Fine Art for Wedding Album

seven All-time Fine art Paper For Photography

• Emily Hutton
• Feb 23, 2022
• 9 min read

Contents

While digital image files tin can be shared and sent hands online, aught beats having the bodily printed photograph there for you to impact, admire, or even souvenir to friends. But you can't just print your photograph on whatever newspaper – you'll need a loftier-quality newspaper that will brand your images stand out and look proficient.

Fine art newspaper is the height option for printed photography – in that location's nothing quite like a fine art impress to bring out the best qualities of a photograph. However, not all of these products are fabricated equal. What works to impress ane type of photograph may non piece of work for another.

Whether you're printing a photo for display or every bit a gift, you lot'll need the right blazon of paper. Read on for our guide to the 7 best art paper products for photography!

Emily Hutton

As a photographer, a restoration, and a designer, Emily isn't just a jack-of-all-trades, she'south a certified good. She'due south a tech junkie, and the almost screen-addicted fellow member of the IRC team. When it comes to product reviews, her insights and recommendations are 2d-to-none.

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Here, we list down 7 best fine fine art paper for photography.

1. Hahnemuhle Photograph Rag Baryta

2. Moab Somerset

3. Hahnemuhle Fine Art Baryta

4. Innova Carving Cotton wool Rag

5. Moab Slickrock

6. Ilford Cotton Creative person Textured

seven. Epson Exhibition

Paper Thickness: 315 GSM

Material: 100% cotton

Cease: Glossy

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The Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Baryta is a sleeky 100% cotton paper with a density of 315 GSM. The barium sulfate in the baryta paper allows colors to come through peculiarly well, making information technology excellent for high-dissimilarity prints and anything that needs high visual touch.

Even amend, Hahnemuhle provides ICC profiles for download on their official folio – letting you lot fine-tune your settings based on your specific printer, ink, and paper setup. It even comes at quite a reasonable toll as photo papers go, so new professional person photographers don't need to worry about breaking the depository financial institution.

This combination of upsides and the extra colour capacity of the coating make the Photograph Rag Baryta our top choice, both for a glossy fine art paper, as well equally overall the best fine art paper for photography.

Paper Thickness: 330 GSM

Cloth: 100% cotton fiber

Finish: Matte

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Moab's Somerset Enhanced Velvet is a 100% cotton fiber newspaper with a matte terminate and a grammage of 330 GSM. Matte papers typically impress a lower colour range than sleeky papers, but Moab has compensated for that with this product.

In most other photo papers, the paper itself is merely a surface, with the blanket doing most of the work. In dissimilarity, Somerset uses the paper surface as well, providing a depth of colour that almost other matte papers can't match. Couple that with Moab's ICC profiles, and you can get prints almost as good as glossy papers.

Somerset Enhanced Velvet comes at a quite reasonable cost for all the qualities information technology has. Information technology's the top choice for when yous want the all-time matte fine fine art paper.

Paper Thickness: 300 GSM

Material: Blastoff-cellulose

Finish: Luster

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The Hahnemuhle FineArt Baryta Satin photograph paper is made of blastoff-cellulose, with a grammage of 300 GSM and a luster finish. Despite the material, this is not a conventional woods-pulp newspaper, and it meets all the standards that cotton-based fine fine art papers do.

The satin gloss surface makes it an excellent choice if you need to balance the virtues of both glossy and matte newspaper for a print, making it a proficient improver to your usual finish preference. The cost may run a flake higher than usual, so consider if the luster end is worth the extra outlay.

Paper Thickness: 315 GSM

Material: 100% cotton

Cease: Matte

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Innova Art's Etching Cotton Rag paper is made from 100% soft grain cotton rag with a paper weight of 315 GSM and a matte end. Despite the finish, Innova's coating provides the paper with an excellent maximum density and color gamut. This means that it displays color quite well – especially for a matte newspaper – so don't hesitate to utilise it for colorful prints.

If you demand a matte paper just don't want to sacrifice any color qualities, then the Carving Cotton Rag is an excellent choice. Further, it's also a quite affordable purchase for its type. Yous can't go incorrect with Innova Art Etching Cotton Rag for fine art printing!

Paper Thickness: 260 GSM

Material: Alpha-cellulose

Finish: Glossy (Metal)

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Moab Slickrock Metal Pearl is made of 100% alpha-cellulose with a grammage of 260 GSM with a metallic end. While this is lighter than boilerplate, it's notwithstanding comparable to typical magazine covers. Recall of metallic papers every bit a subset of glossy finishes. They tend to do less well with sharp item and definition, and are better at showing off shadow and light.

Metal newspaper also does well in depicting images with a polish or gleam, so subjects like cars, industrial equipment, jewelry, or polished fixtures volition come out excellently on Slickrock Metallic Pearl. If you have a lot of metallic subjects or desire to play with chiaroscuro for a print, Slickrock Metal Pearl is the right fine fine art paper for yous.

Newspaper Thickness: 310 GSM

Textile: 100% cotton fiber

Finish: Matte

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Ilford Galerie Cotton Artist Textured newspaper is mould-fabricated from 100% cotton rag, manufactured in a traditional paper mill, and weighs 310 GSM. Information technology has a matte terminate, but that'southward not the but visual kick it has.

The manufacturing process gives it a textured, semi-polish surface that about other photo papers don't have, lending a more than traditional, watercolor feel to annihilation that's printed on the surface.

This makes Cotton Artist Textured a bit unlike from the other products here, and more of a niche pick. Experiment with the textured matte finish and its visual event to see if information technology works for the type of photos you lot want to print. If you need a paper that can impress a photograph to await similar a traditional painting, then go with Ilford's Cotton Artist Textured.

Paper Thickness: 325 GSM

Fabric: Fiber

Finish: Glossy

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Epson Exhibition is a cobweb-based newspaper weighing 325 GSM and with a glossy end. It has splendid color gamut and maximum density, giving your images deep blacks and more than colour richness compared to other papers.

Even so, a large role of this excellent performance is because Exhibition newspaper incorporates optical brightening agents (OBAs). This does do quite a lot for color gamut and density, but information technology also means that prototype quality volition degrade as the OBAs practise. For hymeneals prints or similar mementos intended to last years or decades, this will exist a major factor.

All the same, it does run fairly cheap. If y'all need splendid image quality without having to pay through the nose for fine art prints, Epson Exhibition volition practise the task nicely.

Art Newspaper Heir-apparent's Guide

In that location's a departure betwixt your average photo newspaper and a fine art paper. Both serve the same purpose, but there's several qualities that brand fine art paper a much more interesting option for photo prints than typical photography paper.

While we have our top picks from the whole product list, each project and photograph is unique. To help you make the best decision for you, here's a quick guide to choosing the correct paper.

Fabric

Typical papers are mostly made out of wood pulp. Art papers are made out of natural fibers – most ordinarily cotton rags – and are acid-free. A cotton wool-based paper is heavier, tougher, and provides a better surface for color printing than standard photo papers.

Longevity

One important difference between typical photo papers and art paper is longevity. You don't want precious memento photos and original fine art prints to simply rot away after a decade, which is what happens to typical paper.

Fine art papers are acid-free and lignin-free, which ensures a durable paper and an archival-class surface for your prints. Unlike typical photograph papers, fine art papers also have no optical brighteners – these tin can also degrade and ruin image quality over fourth dimension.

Paper Finish

This characteristic has the greatest effect on visual quality, so it's important to understand what it does and get the right terminate for your intent. Yous've got iii major choices here: glossy, matte, and luster. Any other terminate is simply a variation of i or more of these.

The end you should choose depends on the visual consequence you want to attain as well every bit the qualities of the photograph you're press. Nosotros recommend experimenting to see which ane suits your needs best.

Sleeky

A glossy stop is polish and reflective – this is likely the blazon of finish you're thinking of when it comes to photographs. Glossy paper bears deeper and more vibrant colors than the other finishes, and also preserves detail and definition.

If you want to maximize the visual result (e.g. colors popping off the folio) and become the most gorgeous prints possible, get with sleeky. Nonetheless, at that place is a major problem with sleeky paper – it tends to testify stains and blotch easily, and the finish itself sticks to glass.

Matte

A matte terminate has a textured, non-reflective surface that provides your prints with a classic paper experience. In terms of color, it does best with black-and-white photography and sepia tones.

The lack of reflectivity also means that it'southward less sensitive to low-cal and won't be as hands blemished. So, if you plan to display it nether glass or pass it around to a lot of people, matte is improve. However, matte surfaces won't provide as much vibrancy of color or sharpness of detail the same way that a sleeky finishes will.

Luster

A luster end is the eye option betwixt glossy and matte. You may also encounter it billed as satin, semi-matte/semi-gloss, silk, or other like names.

This stop incorporates the best of both worlds for printing. Yous get all the texture of matte and all the vibrance of glossy, but without their respective weaknesses (due east.g. loss of dissimilarity, vulnerability to glare).

Grammage

Grammage refers to how heavy and how thick a paper is. You may besides run into the terms "density", "paper thickness", or "newspaper weight". This is typically measured in grams per square meter, abbreviated as GSM or g/m2. A higher number means a thicker, heavier newspaper. The standard range is betwixt 200 and 300 GSM. For comparison, average printer paper normally ranges from 90-100 GSM.

Of course, high grammage may not be entirely necessary. The main determining gene here is toughness. That is, how much handling is your print expected to take? Something that you lot expect to exist framed and not moved very much won't need every bit dense a GSM as a photograph yous intend to pass around to a lot of viewers. Consider your intent to select how dense a newspaper you need.

Determination

Whichever need you may have, there'southward a newspaper for information technology.

Are you photographing metals or anything that shimmers? Get a box of Moab Slickrock Metallic Pearl.

Practice yous desire to show off a photograph underneath a drinking glass frame? Moab Somerset Enhanced Velvet is the newspaper for yous.

Do you lot need polish and visual pop, or just the best fine fine art paper available? Our top choice, the Hahnemuhle Photograph Rag Baryta, has never let down a buyer.

The correct newspaper can make or interruption a impress every bit much equally the camera does. With this guide, yous can be certain that you've got the fine art paper you demand for the job.

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