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Choosing Your Paper

Lesson 7 from: The Photo Printing Workshop

Alex Strohl

Choosing Your Paper

Lesson 7 from: The Photo Printing Workshop

Alex Strohl

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Lesson Info

7. Choosing Your Paper

How to decide which paper is right for your prints, between lustre, matte, glossy and a few high end paper choices.
Next Lesson: Printing Italy

Lesson Info

Choosing Your Paper

paper another piece of the toolkit. Obviously when I look at choosing a paper for my photos I look at three things thickness, texture and material. The figure it is the more ink is gonna drink. But also the nester is going to feel texture. Obviously that's if it's semi gloss gloss luster matte. I'll talk to you about that in a second. And the material is what is the paper made of? Because some are made out of cotton or bamboo so it can alter the final images because they're gonna carry a different tint and then handle ink differently. For example there's a handy mule paper I really like and it's the bamboo rag and I don't know why I just love that paper but I can't really pinpoint exactly why. So Take a look at these three things material, texture, thickness. Like I said earlier, you wanna use your manufacturer's paper first when you're starting off before you upgrade into defense your stuff. That's right behind me. So I'm using a Canon printer using Canon paper. Um One big thing to do...

is that you're gonna waste some paper at the beginning. So don't experiment on You know have 1319 here or a three in Europe. Don't use this to experiment right? Just use the equivalent on 8.5, 11 smaller. Right then this is cheaper than that and you can get the same rendering on it. So some other candidate papers that I use premium fine art smooth, pretty thick at 310GS or ÂŁ82 in American. Why do I like it because it's pretty smooth meaning it doesn't have a lot of texture. You know when you feel it it just feels very smooth and it kind of gives a more light clean look to the final image. So definitely like this guy classic. Usually when you go to any printing site they're like you want to do matt or glossy. So this is definitely matt guy. So mad paper is one that doesn't reflect any light mostly and that's going to drink a lot of ink and make your photos a little more darker. So when you're editing we can talk about that later. But you know essentially a mad paper is gonna drink more ink and make you follow us a little darker. Something to consider in editing. But yeah this guy is good. And lastly the photo paper pro luster. So luster is actually something that like this. I don't know if you can see it but it has a bit of a shine to it. It's not glass, it's not semigloss its luster so it's the least shiny fall. Three. The reason you would use this is that if you have a photo you want to print that's not gonna work for matt. So maybe a pretty dark photo or maybe you wanted to pop. I usually go with luster. Not a big fan of the glass but that's a personal choice. I'm not a big fan of the glass because it's a personal choice. I think it just reflects a lot of light and it kind of looks like the small prints that you know our parents have in their disposable cameras and doesn't scream quality to me. But yeah so the more high end fine art papers and cannon papers are absolutely fine. But there's other options out there you will consider as well. So this thing, it's a sampler from hand amulet. So it has rice paper, photo rag, ultra smooth photo rag duo and photo rag 308 G. S. M. S. Which is very thick and lastly photo rag bright white. So really fun when you want to get into higher end papers, you can buy a sampler and then do test print and see what works best. So one of those here, let's talk about snazzy papers. The mule is a legendary paper house from Germany as you can guess from the name and their photo rag Beretta is one that I really like. So taste glass is fine out here. Uh and they call it a high gloss. But to me that's not exactly a high gloss. I find it almost like a luster. That's why I kind of kind of fond of it. Um So one thing to note is that for the photo rag morita, I have the small version, the big version. So this is where my test prints. And this is for my final print right? It's always clever because this is 50 bucks and this is triple almost one thing to consider another favorite. The moab entrada 1 90 so kind of middle of the range thickness. I like it because it's I think it's a cotton paper, yep. And it's a very smooth paper as well. So some days I just feel like using this one. You know you don't have to have reasons why you love some of your papers. But I just see them as the mood. You know the mood dictates the paper. Sometimes I know that has to match the photo. If it's a dark photo, right photo. I'll choose a different paper based on rendition and the gamut of the paper. But I also let my instincts guide me. So don't get bogged down on the specs. Also just I have my piles of paper. I just look at them, touch them and like this one feels good today. It's also part of the creation process. Printing should be fun.

Ratings and Reviews

user c7bdd5
 

Thank you. Lots of good information. Well done.

Isaac Johnston
 

Through and also to the point! Well worth the watch, and I feel confident to print on my own now.

fbuser 517642fd
 

I would recommend it for anyone trying to understand the print process better but, I think Alex needs to work on speaking a bit clearer and maybe slow down a bit when he is moving his cursor around in LR as was difficult to keep up with him and to see what he was doing.

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