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Caveat: If you're not interested in paper, this is probably going to be a very boring read!
I last did a (for me) paper review when I first got a decent printer way back in 2016. It was an Epson Stylus Pro 4800 printer with a roll feeder that could print up to 17" wide. It took 8 220ml ink tanks that cost £80 each but lasted forever!
I was new to colour profiling and all that jazz to begin with, but ended up making a ton of mistakes along the way and getting a decent print was a nightmare. After a few months I got the process down pretty well, mostly thanks to Lightroom's Print Module. I then went off buying millions of test packs to see which paper was the best!
Typically though, there is no such thing as the best paper. There were, however, some really bad ones, and in typical engineering fashion, I made a large spreadsheet to evaluate them all. I think I posted samples of it on TP at some point. Over time, I added new papers, but my printing workflow got better and I was discovering every new paper seemed to be better than the ones before. Lately, I began to wonder whether I was the problem, and not the paper. So I decided to buy more test packs and redo them all again with my relatively new Epson P900, just to see if the results were the same. I share my results here. They weren't!
The Premise
- Buy test packs. Lots of test packs.
- Print out the same test image on each sheet, with no profiling. Just pick the right paper type in the print driver and "let the printer manage the colours". I do this because a) I'm lazy, and b) it would take far too much time to profile every single sheet.
- On the back of each print, I wrote down the paper name/type, as well as the cost for 25 sheets of A4. Where possible, I got the prices from the same supplier. Where not possible, I went to another mainstream supplier (rather than eBay or looking for deals). I want to be able to compare the costs rather than provide a pricing service. Mainly I was curious as to whether there was any super cheap paper out there that is really really good.
- Once all the prints were done, I laid them all out in our conservatory, which has good natural light. I did matt papers in one sitting, then semi-gloss (luster, silk etc), then glossy. These groupings work for me, as each category represents a different basic paper type that I'd choose for an image.
- For each category, I would then evaluate the prints, putting them into piles and scoring them based on...
-- Print Look : How the print looks. How deep are the blacks, are the colours accurate, are the colours bright enough and reflecting what is on my (calibrated) monitor. Points given out of ten.
-- Paper Look : How does the print look on the paper? Is the paper overly white (or overly not white!) Are there any nasty reflections? Is the paper (overly) textured, or marked in any way? Do my grubby fingers leave marks? Points given out of ten.
-- Paper Feel : How does the paper feel in the hand? Is it weighty? Is it plasticky? Points out of 5. Less points for this as it's less important. Prints aren't meant to be handled - unless I'm putting them in a home made book (in which case I'll go for 5s)
-- Put all the results in a spreadsheet so that I can tally up the scores and find some decent papers in a range of price points, and quality. Simple eh?
The last was important because sometimes, friends want prints (for free) and I don't want to spend £1/print for half a dozen prints on all my friends. Sometimes I want matt, sometimes I want glossy, sometimes I want lustre. Sometimes I want to print something out and stick it on the wall for a week to see whether I really like it. It might end up in the bin!
The Results
I wasn't expecting it to be so hard, and it proves that the last time I did this, I was still learning, and my inexperience caused a lot of issues. In terms of colour issues, there were very few - nowhere near the problems I had last time, and this goes to prove that if your colours are way off when you're printing, it's probably you & your software, and not the mechanicals or the paper.
Paper isn't the same level of whiteness either, with some papers being almost cream in colour. This will affect the appearance of your images to the point where reds/yellows may appear overly saturated and blues look a bit weird. As you can see from the photo below, black & white can render quite differently, but this is only apparent (to me) when I compare the same image side by side which isn't going to happen very often in real life. It's just something to be aware of. I don't know whether this can be corrected with an ICC profile (I suspect it can) but that isn't going to help with B&W images. Possibly a silver toning can help, but if you just want native B&W perhaps don't choose a warmer paper. It's a balancing act between wanting natural papers vs papers with OBAs (Optical Brightening Agents) in them. The internet is awash with "what's best" so I'll leave that research up to you!
Matt Papers
Of all the matt papers, it was texture that really made the decision with print quality being so similar (for the most part). Heavily textured papers become a feature of the print as well as the content of the image. Some of the cheaper matt papers were more like white card, but they would be good if you wanted to print out expensive looking flyers, birthday/seasonal cards, or other text only things. Not great for photos, but they do have other uses. I decided to break this down into 2 categories - smooth and textured. Personal preference is all, but I like a matt paper like I like my porridge - neither too textured nor too smooth. The good news is you don't have to waste money on test packs and can instead buy swatches that will give you an idea of texture. Some of the Awagami papers were very interesting and I'd discarded them before because I didn't let the ink dry for 24 hours - I just assumed that they would insta dry like all the other papers. They are quite expensive though, and some are hard to source with the most interesting being the "peel apart" papers which takes the paper from 90odd GSM down to 30! That's thin!
Semi-Gloss, Glossy and Metallic Papers
With very similar textures, and very similar print looks, the main differences came down to Paper Feel which was the least important factor for me in making a print. The exception to this were the metallic papers which lost a few points if they weren't very metallic, because often you will pay a premium for the metallic "look" of your image. The real disappointment was that there is no proper glossy paper that feels "reassuringly expensive". They all feel like horrible plasticky crap, but the image quality was excellent. Even the cheaper gloss papers produced more dense looking blacks and richer looking colours. The downside is that they don't look great at an angle and they feel what they are - which is cheap. The "Lustre" and "Pearl" type papers varied in terms of sheen. Most looked really boring and flat to me, but a few had nice textures and these would be the ones I would gravitate towards.
Ultimately, paper choice is going to be down to you, but there is a bewildering array of paper out there to try, so don't just stick with one. And if you are getting prints that are significantly colour-wrong, then double/triple check your workflow. Print a nozzle check, or a test image from Keith Copper's fabulous site. Everyones eyes are different!
tl;dr - Most papers are really good. Some (Hahnemuhle's Metallic paper and Slickrock's discontinued metallic paper) unique, but most are very similar in looks if not in price. The most difference to be had is in matt papers with the texture.
I've put all my results in Dropbox so if you're interested in my findings, you can download it here. It's Excel: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0770ouhdz4sfua1/paper_2023.xlsx?dl=0 It's also very subjective, but based on comparisons between the same print on different papers rather than just doing one print and evaluating that.
I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts on their paper of preference - especially if it's something they've tried over others they thought weren't as good. I also have my (remaining) test packs up for sale in the classifieds and would love to do a swap with people if they are interested in trying some of the papers I tried and letting me have a sheet or two of their favourite (if I haven't already tried it!)
I last did a (for me) paper review when I first got a decent printer way back in 2016. It was an Epson Stylus Pro 4800 printer with a roll feeder that could print up to 17" wide. It took 8 220ml ink tanks that cost £80 each but lasted forever!
I was new to colour profiling and all that jazz to begin with, but ended up making a ton of mistakes along the way and getting a decent print was a nightmare. After a few months I got the process down pretty well, mostly thanks to Lightroom's Print Module. I then went off buying millions of test packs to see which paper was the best!
Typically though, there is no such thing as the best paper. There were, however, some really bad ones, and in typical engineering fashion, I made a large spreadsheet to evaluate them all. I think I posted samples of it on TP at some point. Over time, I added new papers, but my printing workflow got better and I was discovering every new paper seemed to be better than the ones before. Lately, I began to wonder whether I was the problem, and not the paper. So I decided to buy more test packs and redo them all again with my relatively new Epson P900, just to see if the results were the same. I share my results here. They weren't!
The Premise
- Buy test packs. Lots of test packs.
- Print out the same test image on each sheet, with no profiling. Just pick the right paper type in the print driver and "let the printer manage the colours". I do this because a) I'm lazy, and b) it would take far too much time to profile every single sheet.
- On the back of each print, I wrote down the paper name/type, as well as the cost for 25 sheets of A4. Where possible, I got the prices from the same supplier. Where not possible, I went to another mainstream supplier (rather than eBay or looking for deals). I want to be able to compare the costs rather than provide a pricing service. Mainly I was curious as to whether there was any super cheap paper out there that is really really good.
- Once all the prints were done, I laid them all out in our conservatory, which has good natural light. I did matt papers in one sitting, then semi-gloss (luster, silk etc), then glossy. These groupings work for me, as each category represents a different basic paper type that I'd choose for an image.
- For each category, I would then evaluate the prints, putting them into piles and scoring them based on...
-- Print Look : How the print looks. How deep are the blacks, are the colours accurate, are the colours bright enough and reflecting what is on my (calibrated) monitor. Points given out of ten.
-- Paper Look : How does the print look on the paper? Is the paper overly white (or overly not white!) Are there any nasty reflections? Is the paper (overly) textured, or marked in any way? Do my grubby fingers leave marks? Points given out of ten.
-- Paper Feel : How does the paper feel in the hand? Is it weighty? Is it plasticky? Points out of 5. Less points for this as it's less important. Prints aren't meant to be handled - unless I'm putting them in a home made book (in which case I'll go for 5s)
-- Put all the results in a spreadsheet so that I can tally up the scores and find some decent papers in a range of price points, and quality. Simple eh?
The last was important because sometimes, friends want prints (for free) and I don't want to spend £1/print for half a dozen prints on all my friends. Sometimes I want matt, sometimes I want glossy, sometimes I want lustre. Sometimes I want to print something out and stick it on the wall for a week to see whether I really like it. It might end up in the bin!
The Results
I wasn't expecting it to be so hard, and it proves that the last time I did this, I was still learning, and my inexperience caused a lot of issues. In terms of colour issues, there were very few - nowhere near the problems I had last time, and this goes to prove that if your colours are way off when you're printing, it's probably you & your software, and not the mechanicals or the paper.
Paper isn't the same level of whiteness either, with some papers being almost cream in colour. This will affect the appearance of your images to the point where reds/yellows may appear overly saturated and blues look a bit weird. As you can see from the photo below, black & white can render quite differently, but this is only apparent (to me) when I compare the same image side by side which isn't going to happen very often in real life. It's just something to be aware of. I don't know whether this can be corrected with an ICC profile (I suspect it can) but that isn't going to help with B&W images. Possibly a silver toning can help, but if you just want native B&W perhaps don't choose a warmer paper. It's a balancing act between wanting natural papers vs papers with OBAs (Optical Brightening Agents) in them. The internet is awash with "what's best" so I'll leave that research up to you!
Matt Papers
Of all the matt papers, it was texture that really made the decision with print quality being so similar (for the most part). Heavily textured papers become a feature of the print as well as the content of the image. Some of the cheaper matt papers were more like white card, but they would be good if you wanted to print out expensive looking flyers, birthday/seasonal cards, or other text only things. Not great for photos, but they do have other uses. I decided to break this down into 2 categories - smooth and textured. Personal preference is all, but I like a matt paper like I like my porridge - neither too textured nor too smooth. The good news is you don't have to waste money on test packs and can instead buy swatches that will give you an idea of texture. Some of the Awagami papers were very interesting and I'd discarded them before because I didn't let the ink dry for 24 hours - I just assumed that they would insta dry like all the other papers. They are quite expensive though, and some are hard to source with the most interesting being the "peel apart" papers which takes the paper from 90odd GSM down to 30! That's thin!
Semi-Gloss, Glossy and Metallic Papers
With very similar textures, and very similar print looks, the main differences came down to Paper Feel which was the least important factor for me in making a print. The exception to this were the metallic papers which lost a few points if they weren't very metallic, because often you will pay a premium for the metallic "look" of your image. The real disappointment was that there is no proper glossy paper that feels "reassuringly expensive". They all feel like horrible plasticky crap, but the image quality was excellent. Even the cheaper gloss papers produced more dense looking blacks and richer looking colours. The downside is that they don't look great at an angle and they feel what they are - which is cheap. The "Lustre" and "Pearl" type papers varied in terms of sheen. Most looked really boring and flat to me, but a few had nice textures and these would be the ones I would gravitate towards.
Ultimately, paper choice is going to be down to you, but there is a bewildering array of paper out there to try, so don't just stick with one. And if you are getting prints that are significantly colour-wrong, then double/triple check your workflow. Print a nozzle check, or a test image from Keith Copper's fabulous site. Everyones eyes are different!
tl;dr - Most papers are really good. Some (Hahnemuhle's Metallic paper and Slickrock's discontinued metallic paper) unique, but most are very similar in looks if not in price. The most difference to be had is in matt papers with the texture.
I've put all my results in Dropbox so if you're interested in my findings, you can download it here. It's Excel: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0770ouhdz4sfua1/paper_2023.xlsx?dl=0 It's also very subjective, but based on comparisons between the same print on different papers rather than just doing one print and evaluating that.
I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts on their paper of preference - especially if it's something they've tried over others they thought weren't as good. I also have my (remaining) test packs up for sale in the classifieds and would love to do a swap with people if they are interested in trying some of the papers I tried and letting me have a sheet or two of their favourite (if I haven't already tried it!)
