Digital BW, The Print

You question is good. I don't know of a lot of inexpensive quality
papers out there.


I've settled on Innova Smooth Cotton for "matte" work. It is 100% rag
and reasonable in price and has a very smooth and durable finish. The
Epson UltraSmooth is also a very good matte paper but with no obas at
all, it is more expensive but very high quality. It is outstanding for
color gamut and sharpness but the hues for black and white work can
come up cold and strange. That depends on your inkset.

I don't really test a lot of papers anymore. Would love to hear what
people are playing with these days. With the cost of my time and the
cost of ink and the wear and tear on the machines I wouldn't want to
fool around with something that I'm not fairly sure of. I did use the
Innova Fiba Print paper in place of EEMatte for awhile (before that
Legion Matt that isn't any better) and found it nice looking. I
wouldn't call it any more archival though. I had a batch of that that
couldn't hold dense blacks without motteling. That scared me off,
along with the fact that it was almost as expensive as much better
papers and I found it scratched very easily before outputting and
drying. In short, I was disappointed with it. Others may disagree
completely.

John