How to choose an inkjet paper for printing
Fountain of Grace – Printed on Baryta Paper
This guide lays out how to choose the right paper for printing – what papers work best for certain images, what papers are top quality, and more.
Without fail, one of the most common questions asked by students in printing classes is how to choose a paper for a specific image.
With the wealth and diversity of superb inkjet papers on the market today, even experienced printmakers have difficulty with how to choose the right paper for printing.
The number of choices can simply be overwhelming.
In part because of this fact, most images today sadly never make it into print form, remaining forever ensconced in monitors only to be viewed on the web. Printing is an art and a science – a craft that takes time to learn – as is choosing the most suitable paper for a particular image.
To make matters more confusing, paper selection includes both important scientific data, as well as unquantifiable artistic qualities. When examining a paper’s specification data sheet, numbers and data sometimes overwhelm and don’t paint the entire ‘picture’ in regards to artistic choices. In this post, I will attempt to clarify various paper types and some important characteristics and terminology to help guide you in making paper selections.
