Digital BW, The Print

I realise that choice of papers to print on is a subjective and 
personal preferance....but,it seems that most "fine art" and black 
and white printers prefer matte surfaces.There are drawbacks to this 
paper choice(less dmax,less detail(in general)....so....i'm 
wondering,what are the pluses to matte "fine art" papers?

thanks for your opinions(they may help me make my choices)

andy graham

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "justme5571"
<justmeok55@h...> wrote:
> 
> 
> I realise that choice of papers to print on is a subjective and 
> personal preferance....but,it seems that most "fine art" and black 
> and white printers prefer matte surfaces.There are drawbacks to this 
> paper choice(less dmax,less detail(in general)....so....i'm 
> wondering,what are the pluses to matte "fine art" papers?
> 
> thanks for your opinions(they may help me make my choices)
> 
> andy graham

Most use matte because everything else generally suffers from bronzing
and other surface oddities and aren't as "archival" (ie they want
their holiday pics to last a century). 

Many make a virtue of "art" papers because they find digital printing
more similar to silkscreen or etching than to traditional photography. 
Makes sense, considering the amount of Photoshopping some do.

I seem to be settling into Moab Entrada because it reminds me of a
long-forgotten warm-toned Kodak portrait paper. It also qualifies as
"archival", fwiw. Epson Enhanced Matte is also good because its the
ultimate surface upon which to review my efforts. Profiles for those 
two are nearly identical.

Perhaps because the ink permeates deeper into the paper, the matte
papers have what some call a "depth" that glossy lacks. For me, that
is the only benefit, and it only helps with certain images. I think
with the recent research on gloss optimizers we will see more glossy
options in the near future. 

-Pieris
digital darkroom blog: http://www.pmb.net/darkroom


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "justme5571"
<justmeok55@h...> wrote:
> 
> 
> I realise that choice of papers to print on is a subjective and 
> personal preferance....but,it seems that most "fine art" and black 
> and white printers prefer matte surfaces.There are drawbacks to
this 

> paper choice(less dmax,less detail(in general)....so....i'm 
> wondering,what are the pluses to matte "fine art" papers?
> 
> thanks for your opinions(they may help me make my choices)
> 
> andy graham