Matte paper comparison: Hahnemuhle Ultra Smooth vs. Canson Arches 88 vs. Canson PhotoSatin

I'll preface this post by saying I'm relatively new to home printing, and find night photos especially difficult to print. I'm refining my process and experimenting with papers. I thought this experiment would be helpful to share.

For most prints I prefer a smooth, matte, fine art paper, and Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth has been my standard. I heard good things about Canson Infinity Arches 88 (including on this forum) so wanted to compare. I also had a few sheets of Canson Infinity PhotoSatin Premium, which is Canson's most matte photo paper, and notably available at the photo labs near me, so I wanted to see how that held up.

Here's how I did this test. I started with 3 recent photos taken on my GFX100S, and prepped them for printing about 10" wide on my Epson P800 in Photoshop. I soft proofed them as I usually do for Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth, which means adding a little brightness and taking away a bit of contrast. I printed them on each paper using these same settings. For the color photos, I changed the ICC profile to the printer-specific profile provided by the paper manufacturer. For the bw photo, I used the Advanced B&W setting on the P800. I then laid the prints side by side in a room with a lot of natural light and took iPhone photos of them (I didn't have time to photograph the prints with something better, but I mainly wanted to get a sense of the differences in tonality).

Here's the jpeg files of the photo files I started with:

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Here's Hahnemuhle Ultra Smooth (left) vs. Canson Arches 88 (right). Let's start with the bw shot:



These both looked great. The Hahnemuhle had a little more contrast, and the Canson was a little warmer and brighter. You'll have to trust me on this, but the detail was fantastic on both, and the finish was very similar with low reflection.

Now the color shots, again Hahnemuhle Ultra Smooth (left) vs. Canson Arches 88 (right):





These surprised me -- the Hahnemuhle had more contrast but also was significantly darker and more saturated. I wondered how much of this was due to the ICC profile, so I printed the Hahnemuhle again using the Canson's ICC profile and this is what I got:



Now the colors are almost identical, but the Hahnemuhle is still a bit darker and more contrasty.

Now on to the Canson Infinity PhotoSatin Premium. I'll be brief, I didn't like it. The finish was fairly reflective, and it was very dark and punchy to the point where I would have to do a ton of editing in the soft proofing stage. Also the details of the PhotoSatin were less crisp, a little smeared. Here's the PhotoSatin on the left and the Arches 88 on the right.



My conclusions are that the Hahnemuhle Ultra Smooth and Canson Arches 88 are both excellent papers for my needs, and the ICC profile from the manufacturer matters a lot more than I realized. I slightly prefer the Arches 88 for my night shots because of it's higher brightness and lower contrast, which means I'll have to do less editing in the soft proofing stage (I typically add brightness and decrease contrast). I definitely prefer Canson's ICC profile which is closer to what I'm seeing on screen.

Playing with different papers is fun.

I first heard of Arches 88 when I saw reviews describing it as a game changer for matte papers. The finish of a matte with the Dmax of shiny papers. I bought a box of the stuff and compared it to my usual matte paper, Permajet Mat Plus. I could see zero difference in image quality, simply couldn't tell the prints apart. Arches 88 is 4x the price of Mat Plus, which was a little disappointing for no difference whatsoever. Then I remembered that Arches is a top quality rag paper with no OBAs, and that is what you pay for. The fact that it is no worse than Mat Plus which is an alpha cellulose paper with OBAs is what you are paying for.

I do think all those reviews were disingenuous, though. It may be better than other rag papers without OBAs, but there are much cheaper matte papers with the same image quality even if you have to give up archival properties - and I've been using Mat Plus for 15 years, and I see no degradation so far. It's good enough for me, and a bargain price. Arches is a fine paper, just expensive.

DMillier said:

Playing with different papers is fun.

I first heard of Arches 88 when I saw reviews describing it as a game changer for matte papers. The finish of a matte with the Dmax of shiny papers. I bought a box of the stuff and compared it to my usual matte paper, Permajet Mat Plus. I could see zero difference in image quality, simply couldn't tell the prints apart. Arches 88 is 4x the price of Mat Plus, which was a little disappointing for no difference whatsoever. Then I remembered that Arches is a top quality rag paper with no OBAs, and that is what you pay for. The fact that it is no worse than Mat Plus which is an alpha cellulose paper with OBAs is what you are paying for.

I do think all those reviews were disingenuous, though. It may be better than other rag papers without OBAs, but there are much cheaper matte papers with the same image quality even if you have to give up archival properties - and I've been using Mat Plus for 15 years, and I see no degradation so far. It's good enough for me, and a bargain price. Arches is a fine paper, just expensive.

Click to expand...

That's good to know, thank you for sharing!

I only make/sell prints occasionally - if you sell do you think customers like to see fine art quality paper? Or does it not matter.

spilla said:

DMillier said:

Playing with different papers is fun.

I first heard of Arches 88 when I saw reviews describing it as a game changer for matte papers. The finish of a matte with the Dmax of shiny papers. I bought a box of the stuff and compared it to my usual matte paper, Permajet Mat Plus. I could see zero difference in image quality, simply couldn't tell the prints apart. Arches 88 is 4x the price of Mat Plus, which was a little disappointing for no difference whatsoever. Then I remembered that Arches is a top quality rag paper with no OBAs, and that is what you pay for. The fact that it is no worse than Mat Plus which is an alpha cellulose paper with OBAs is what you are paying for.

I do think all those reviews were disingenuous, though. It may be better than other rag papers without OBAs, but there are much cheaper matte papers with the same image quality even if you have to give up archival properties - and I've been using Mat Plus for 15 years, and I see no degradation so far. It's good enough for me, and a bargain price. Arches is a fine paper, just expensive.

Click to expand...

That's good to know, thank you for sharing!

I only make/sell prints occasionally - if you sell do you think customers like to see fine art quality paper? Or does it not matter.

Click to expand...

It matters to sophisticated customers, curators, and archivists.

I also like the Canson Arhces 88 better for those night shots. But I think in the street with trees comparison the Hahnemuhle better preserved your original edit.

rbf said:

I also like the Canson Arhces 88 better for those night shots. But I think in the street with trees comparison the Hahnemuhle better preserved your original edit.

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You’re right, but! I’m used to printing on the Hahnemuhle and edited for it by increasing the exposure and decreasing contrast. I bet the Canson would look closer without those edits.

spilla said:

rbf said:

I also like the Canson Arhces 88 better for those night shots. But I think in the street with trees comparison the Hahnemuhle better preserved your original edit.

Click to expand...

You’re right, but! I’m used to printing on the Hahnemuhle and edited for it by increasing the exposure and decreasing contrast. I bet the Canson would look closer without those edits.

Click to expand...

Looks like you found a winner then!

DMillier said:

Playing with different papers is fun.

I first heard of Arches 88 when I saw reviews describing it as a game changer for matte papers. The finish of a matte with the Dmax of shiny papers. I bought a box of the stuff and compared it to my usual matte paper, Permajet Mat Plus. I could see zero difference in image quality, simply couldn't tell the prints apart. Arches 88 is 4x the price of Mat Plus, which was a little disappointing for no difference whatsoever. Then I remembered that Arches is a top quality rag paper with no OBAs, and that is what you pay for. The fact that it is no worse than Mat Plus which is an alpha cellulose paper with OBAs is what you are paying for.

I do think all those reviews were disingenuous, though. It may be better than other rag papers without OBAs, but there are much cheaper matte papers with the same image quality even if you have to give up archival properties - and I've been using Mat Plus for 15 years, and I see no degradation so far. It's good enough for me, and a bargain price. Arches is a fine paper, just expensive.

Click to expand...

Paper prices are also function of paper thickness. Permajet Mat Plus is ~ 240gsm, Arches 88 is 310+gsm.

I appreciate Rag or Matte papers, but it feels as if it's a struggle to get the deep blacks to be deep black while still keeping discernable detail in the shadows just above deep, deep black. I run into this issue especially with monochrome output. I'm sure this is my fault, not the equipment's nor the paper's nor the profiles'.

I'm printing to a Canon imagePROGRAF Pro-2000.

I'll be the first to confess that my knowledge of the interaction of files, profiles, and paper is rudimentary. Years and years of darkroom printing taught me what to look for, but the methodology is so different now.

I've been remiss in understanding or tweaking profiles, and end up just tweaking the files to get what I'm aiming for in the output. This feels like steering with the rear wheels.

I end up with one version of a file for printing to Matte, and another for printing to Glossy. Maybe that's OK. I just don't know what I can reasonably expect from profiles.

And it's too easy, I guess, just to print to Glossy paper to get the deep blacks I crave but still preserve the shadow detail I want.

But esthetically, I really like the appearance of a great print on cotton Rag under glass.

Always more to learn and get better at!