Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm
The world's most popular fine art inkjet paper. An absolutely classic, smooth, matte rag paper that everyone should try.
Made in Germany by Hahnemühle
Hahnemühle Bamboo 290gsm
Our favourite warmtone fine art paper - with rich & velvety tones. It's also highly eco-friendly making it pretty much perfect in our book!
Sample of this paper available in:
Hahnemühle Natural Line Sample Pack, or
Hahnemühle Smooth Matte Inkjet Sample Pack
Description
Made from 90% bamboo fibres and 10% cotton, and with a very smooth surface capable of expressing fine details easily, Hahnemühle Bamboo holds beautifully rich and velvety tones, looks gorgeous and handles & prints well. It really is a must try paper!
The warmer tone and smooth surface suits things like black and white portraiture especially well, but we use this for all sorts of things and it's one of the most popular papers in our own printing service for sure.
Basically - if you're after a fine art smooth matte paper, and your image doesn't need crisp whites, then this should be your go-to choice in our opinion.
Bamboo requires only a third of the water to grow that cotton and other traditional paper fibres need. Also, bamboo does not really have any natural pests, meaning there's no need for chemical pesticides. At best it can grow up to 120cm per day so is a highly productive, renewable resource perfect for paper making.
(Apparently, cotton uses about 3% of farming space in the world, but about 25% of all pesticides and herbicides - and the processing needed for cotton is also vastly less ecologically friendly as well, so the total impact of cotton is quite heavy).
Construction
Fibre Based
Substrate
Bamboo 90%, Cotton 10%
(acid free)
Paper Weight
290 gsm
Surface Texture
Matte, Smooth
White Tone
Warm
Optical Brighteners?
Specifications
Please note: Specifications are provided as a guide only.
We try very hard to keep these up to date and correct, but if a particular specification is really critical to you, then please double check the specification directly with the manufacturer. Some features may of course have caveats not fully described here.
To get more information about a particular specification, use the arrow to get a 'Specxplanation'.
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ConstructionFibre Based
Described simple, papers are constructed in two main ways:
Resin Coated papers are the 'modern' approach. These use less fibre and replace the fibre with resin (a nice name for plastic). This means these papers are relatively cheap, strong and robust, but tend to be less attractive to the touch, and accept less ink. They tend to have a clinical appearance and it's hard to write on the back of them. They tend to be popular in the consumer and wedding/portrait markets. Important to note: these papers are difficult or impossible to recycle because of their plastic content.
Fibre Based papers are traditional papers made without plastic, using only plant fibres. These tend to accept more ink and have a more attractive appearance, and these are the papers most of our customers favour. These papers are fully recyclable and we thus strongly recommend you use fibre based papers whenever possible.
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SubstrateBamboo 90%, Cotton 10%
What is the paper base made from?
Possibilities include:
- Wood Pulp - the most common and cheapest
- Alpha Cellulose - the best part of wood pulp, separated. Generally tested as archival as cotton etc
- Cotton - the most common fine art paper fibre
- Bamboo - an ecologically friendly alternative to cotton
- Mulberry & more - many other plant fibres can be used to make archival paper
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Acid Free?
Is this paper acid free?
Acid in paper leads to earlier yellowing and the paper will also become brittle more quickly. Thus for a paper to be archival, it needs to be acid free.
Papers which are not acid free are generally best used for proofing (test printing), and shorter term purposes. That is, they are not considered to be a fine art level product, or suitable for print sales into the art or professional photography markets.
This does not, of course, mean these papers will vanish or discolour overnight - they generally still have life-spans suitable for commercial work and above or on par with e.g. typical photo chemistry papers. They are thus suitable to markets like signage, or the decor market (e.g. print sales for kiddies bedrooms, for example) - but should be avoided if you're trying to sell your work as a serious art level product.
In general, papers made from cotton are naturally acid free, which is one reason they are often favoured. Other fibres, like Kozo, are also naturally acid free. High grade wood pulp papers can also be made to be acid free, however, if the lignin/acid is removed from the pulp.
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CoatingMicroporous
These days almost all papers are microporous coated - meaning they'll accept inks from both dye based and pigment printers well.
In years past, some papers had a swellable coating - designed to give a greater life to prints with dye based inks but this approach has fallen out of favour.
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Paper Weight290 gsm
In 'gsm' - grams per square metre.
Not, technically, the same as paper thickness, but obviously correlated. The heft of the paper. European art papers are traditionally generally around the 300gsm mark. Asian papers historically tended to be lighter, 100 to 200 gsm.
Papers with a higher GSM tend to have more opacity, i.e. you see less through them.
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Thickness / Caliper0.50mm (EN ISO 534)
The thickness of the paper, as supplied by the manufacturer. Also known as Caliper (as calipers are used to measure this value).
Unit are in millimetres (e.g. 0.5mm, half a millimetre), or microns/μm = micrometre, or thousands of a millimetre. I.e. 500 microns (μm) = 0.5mm.
(Note in many ways this a much more relevant figure than the more often quoated gsm - as it is thickness of a paper, more than weight, which determines how easily a printer feeds a paper).
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Surface TextureMatte, Smooth
What is the surface texture of the paper?
We divide this into six groups. We go by the appearance of the actual paper and not what the manufacturer might label the box with!
- Matte - smooth and texture
- Gloss - semi, gloss, and high gloss
- Double Sided - special case papers that are printable to full quality on both sides.
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White ToneWarm
What is the white tone of the paper?
- Cool White - a paper with a distinctly cool (blue) tone
- Bright White - A paper that is brighter than non brightened papers, but not overly cool
- White - a natural clean white tone for an art paper - most Photo Rag papers fall here
- Warm - a distinctly warmer, creamier paper
- Pearlescent - a distinct warm grey tone (generally found only with metallic papers)
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White Value83% (D65 2° 460 nm)
Measurement of the white tone of the paper, as supplied by the manufacturer, with the measurement standard they have used (where given). It's really best used e.g. as a comparison figure against other papers, rather than an objective figure for any one paper.
The value is often given as a percentage (with an ISO standard), or more usually as an LAB value (with a measuring standard). If you want to understand LAB, then we have information in Chapter Two of our Fundamentals of Digital learning resource.
Important - this is an average figure and not a specific guarantee that any particular sheet you might measure will be exactly this figure.
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Optical Brighteners?
Does the paper contain chemicals in it to brighten its appearance?
We're using the value/description the manufacturer supplies (see also the White Tone and White Value specs).
In many cases, only a small amount is used to even out batches of cotton, and then only in the paper base, not the coating - in these cases, it is generally agreed such use of OBAs is essentially insignificant and will not materially impair the archival life of the paper.
More on this here.
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Compatible InksPigment Inks (use matte black)
Dye Based Inks
What ink type (dye and/or pigments) can you use with the paper?
Also, if using pigment inks and you have a choice, should you use the Matte Black or Photo Black ink?
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Paper Type In DriverSee this article
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Full Specs.
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