In Search Of The Perfect Baryta Paper
Our wrap-up assessment of four fantastic baryta papers
Introduction
Quite a while in the making, this is a wrap-up and conclusion to our ”In Search Of A Great Baryta Paper”series. I’ll summarize this as quickly as possible for those that want a quick answer. We took a poll of what baryta papers the community uses. You can see the results in our newsletter from July 2022.
Based on those results we bought a bunch of papers and conducted tests against our go-to workhorse baryta paper — Moab Juniper Rag since Les and I are intimately familiar with it. We used visual criteria against a variety of control prints in both black and white as well as color. The control prints were selected based on the evaluation criteria we used. Evaluation of the comparison prints was conducted under optimal conditions, specifically in our GTI viewing boothp.
Over the next few months, we published our assessments which are available for your review in case you missed them:
October 2022 Juniper v. Canson Prestige II 340
November 2022 Hahnemühle Fine Art Baryta
December 2022 Red River Big Bend Baryta 310
Based on our evaluations if you are using any of these papers there’s not a compelling argument that could be made to switch based on any clear superiority of one over another. I’d speculate that among these manufacturers the same could be said of the baryta varieties we’ve not evaluated. Are there differences worth taking a look at? Absolutely, based on taste, a specific body of work, a specific use, etc. On the other hand, one thing I can say with confidence is that they are all different enough that I’d never recommend using them together in the same exhibition or the same body of work to be shown together. They are too different to pass for one another.
If you are a heavy user and lover of baryta papers stay with what you know, that’s probably more important than never getting to know a particular paper well. All of these papers are fantastic. For those of you that do use baryta papers a lot, I’d recommend trying another especially if you are looking to fine-tune your output for a particular project, a specific genre, or have a very good idea of what your preferences are.
Contained within are our assessments presented together and in a format that we hope will be a guide to those of you that are familiar with one of these papers in terms of which one you may want to try next based on your tastes or what distinguishing attribute you are looking for. I’ve taken all of our findings and grouped related criteria with objective and subjective findings, I made a couple of charts relating various characteristics, and provided a few illustrations that attempt to show things that may be difficult to describe. All of this is consolidated into a PDF that I hope serves as a reference guide to all of you baryta paper lovers that want an overview of what’s out there.
There are quite a few more varieties of baryta papers out there even within the brands we’ve looked at. If our community is interested please drop us a note indicating you’d like us to expand this comparison.