How To Get The Most Out of Your Photo Printing Paper

Innova 280gsm Photo FibaPrint: This ultra-smooth, acid-free, "Fourdrinier made" paper is made the old-fashioned way -- the Fourdrinier brothers' machine was patented in 1803 -- and its surface is very much like that of black-and-white fiber-based silver papers. It's available in sizes ranging from 8.5x11 sheets to 24-inch-wide rolls (each 49.2 feet long), and it also comes in a heavier, natural-white, museum-quality version.

Hahnemühle Torchon: The coarse texture of this matte paper makes it an excellent choice for experiments with getting photographs to look like paintings, or for printing arty portraits in the Julia Margaret Cameron mold. It's coated, bright white, and water-resistant.

Bergger High Definition Fine Art Satin Smooth Inkjet Paper: Arches has long been known for the quality of its artists' printmaking and water­color papers. When Bergger applies its inkjet coating to Arches paper, the resulting stock works with both dye- and pigment-based inks, providing a very smooth result.

Lumijet Canvas Cloth Media: This is one of the few "canvas" inkjet surfaces that's actually coated fabric, which means you can mount the finished print on a painting stretcher if you like. Printing on canvas takes practice; be sure to start with the plain-paper setting to use as little ink as possible. If you want a smoother, more flexible material, try the Lumijet line's coated Belgian Linen.

Legion Somerset Enhanced Velvet: Available in sheets and rolls up to 60 inches wide, this archival paper has an excellent reputation among photographers who like to make large prints. But unlike most such high-end papers, it also comes in a 4x6-inch sheet size, for those who prefer to work on a small scale -- or simply want to share their snapshots in style.

Lyson Pro Photo Gloss: The gloss of tradition­al darkroom papers is one of the hardest properties to match with ink­jet printing. Lyson's pro-level entry does this well. It's resin-based, so it feels like a traditional print, and it works with both dye and pigment inks. If your printer uses dye-based inks, and you'd prefer a fiber-based print, try Legion's Darkroom Archival Gloss.

Media Street Royal Jazz: Perhaps one of the most unusually textured "water- color" papers out there, Royal Jazz is pH-neutral, and it has a stippled, nubby texture that's almost like a smooth sandpaper. It's warm in tone, and not too heavy, so you should have no problem running it through your inkjet printer.

Size Matters

Here's what those inkjet-paper designations mean

Once you've settled on the kind of paper you want, you have to pick the size. In the silver-halide darkroom the four most popular sheet sizes were 5x7, 8x10, 11x14, and 16x20. But because inkjet printer companies got their start making office machines, inkjet photo paper comes in workaday sizes such as letter and legal -- designated with a baffling system of letter and number combinations. (In fact, the traditional 5x7, 11x14, and 16x20 sizes have been lost in transition.) Here's some help translating U.S. and metric inkjet paper desig­nations into old-fashioned inches.

U.S. SIZES

A (Letter) 8.5x11 inches

Legal 8.5x14 inches

B (Ledger) 11x17 inches

Super B (same as metric A3+) 13x19 inches

C 17x22 inches

D 22x34 inches

(no letter designations for 4x6, 8x10, or 8x12)

METRIC SIZES

A5 5.8x8.3 inches

A4 8.3x11.7 inches

A3 11.7x16.5 inches

A3+ (same as U.S. Super B) 13x19 inches

A2 16.5x23.4 inches

A1 23.4x33.1 inches