Digital BW, The Print

I'll add my voice to those who prefer matte papers.  For me, glossy is for brochures.

Tyler wrote:
>
> and interestingly, a well varnished good matte print can bear more resemblance to what many of us like about silver, than the PK inkjet papers...
> the image is "In" the coating, ...
> PK photo ink papers, the image still sits on top, even a bit of spray seems to help.


> In the early days of this forum, many were experimenting with various approaches ...

I was enthused by Hydrocote water based polyurethane for a while.  Using a "Mayer rod" to coat Arches uncoated watercolor paper, I was able to get a dmax of 2.5, but there were too many downsides.

>... 
> The reason some of us respond more favorably to matte ink than matte silver is part of the same scenario, they bear more resemblance to platinum, palladium, gravure, etc, where the image is within the surface, but there is nothing between us and that surface.

Nothing except the glazing we'd like to be able to do without but can't.  So far I have not used the optically coated glass or acrylic approach due to cost (and I don't like the residual green reflection of Tru Vue).  I'm tempted by these products, however.

> But with matte silver there's the somewhat dull gelatin over it...

I'd never thought about that before, but there is an obvious difference between the old silver print matte and what we do.  The matte silver prints had such a bad reputation I never even tried them. Now that you mention it, the matte gelatin must have acted like a lightly frosted glass over the image.  The cheap anti-reflecting glazing materials use the same approach with disappointing results.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com