Digital BW, The Print

Michael - Many of the papers you mentioned will provide excellent 
results, and there is really nothing wrong with continuing to use the 
Enhanced Matte. Its archival issues aside it is one of the most 
versatile and high performance papers out there. The D-Max attainable 
on it is hard to beat, let alone match with other papers...and it is 
certainly very economical.

Still, if the fact that it is loaded with OBA's and contains wood pulp 
dissuades you from using it then there are a lot of great alternatives 
out there. My favorite has always been the Hahnemühle Photo Rag, which 
gives me the nicest, richest blacks of all the papers I've used. The 
flaking issue has never really been an issue for me. As long as you 
take a few precautions it should be fine, and in my opinion is worth 
the trouble. I've also found that Enhanced Matte and Photo Rag have 
roughly the same color gamut, so I use it to proof Photo Rag. Another 
plus is Bill Atkinson's 7600/9600 Enhanced Matte profile works great on 
both EEM and Photo Rag.

Other papers to consider are the Hawk Mountain Condor, the Moab 
Entrada, Innova Smooth Cotton High White (sort of a new paper), and 
Breathing Color's Elegance. Those last two do contain some OBA's, but 
they are just so nice I couldn't leave them out.

Happy printing,

Eric Bullock
PixelPusherz Imaging
www.pixelpusherz.net