Digital BW, The Print

Hello Steve,

>I have some beautiful winter rural snowcapes I wanted to print, but 
>undecided which paper to use. The snowscapes are somewhat hi-key with 
>not a lot of shadow detail or contrast. I'm open to suggestions on 
>which brands, textures, tones, etc. to use that will best simulate 
>the softness, subtle feel of snow. I'm using a 3800 with K3 inks.
> 
>Since I'm not an experienced digital printer, I'd appreciate hearing 
>some of your thoughts and suggestions.

Any good paper will do a good job at that.  Please have a look at
article #5 at the link below.  It lists characteristics of about 25
matte papers.  When I was doing research for it I printed two test
prints on all of those papers.  One of them was a snow scene which had
a large patch of brilliant white snow with subtle detail in the snow
texture.  In general I found the biggest difference in the papers was
in how they handled shadow detail.  They all handled the snow very well. 

Any differences will most likely come down to how the dark areas are
handled, and personal preference for the highlights.  For example, if
you visually want the snow to be white, then you might not be happy
with a creamy warm colored paper.  But that's the sort of thing only
you can decide for yourself.   Unfortunately the only way to find your
paper is to lay out some bucks and buy some samples.  Only by making
prints will you find your way there.

Since you are using 3800/K3 I'd definitely recommend Epson Velvet Fine
Art as a starting point.  K3 is superb on this paper and it will
certainly set a high standard for others to match.


Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm