Hahnemuhle Fine Art Paper Review

Recently I posted a review on the Crane Papers and said how I will be reviewing more papers as they are sent to me. I have recently acquired Hahnemuhle Fine Art Papers and have done tests on the most appealing paper choices. I selected 4 papers out of the 9 in the pack. Hahnemuhle also do not bleach their papers and do offer a humane & animal friendly selection.

Hahnemuhle has designed a beautiful 100% rag (cotton) paper of which they call William Turner. This paper has a whiteness of 99 where as the Crane papers were only 91. The William Turner paper has so much texture it has a true museum quality to it. Its touch is soft and bends without cracking. When printing, the inks are absorbed deep into the paper and do not bleed. The test image I used on all of these papers is of a colored scene designed by Colorvision for their print calibration software. This image is supposed to be printed using the AdobeRGB1998 color profile, not the paper manufactures color profile. The densitometer reading from Colorvision?s PrintFixPlus the blackest black is reading at 1 where true black is 0 and the whitest white is reading at 240 out of 255.

Next I tested the Hahnemuhle German Etching Paper which is very similar to the William Turner paper except more of an off white tone. Although there is a lot of texture in the paper, it is not as friendly as the William Turner. The print was equally as sharp and also did not bleed at all. The black reading is still 1, but the white reading is at 234. This is only because of the paper tint.

I tried to test Hahnemuhle?s standard Fine Art photo paper which is most likely designed for a consumer based inkjet paper, but it crumbled in the machine.

My last test was the Hahnemuhle Fine Art Pearl Paper. Also with a white brightness of 99 this paper absorbed the ink below the surface and also above the surface on the gloss finish. This design of paper keeps the colors dynamic and contrast high while also giving a very sharp image. This is one of the sharpest papers I have yet to see. At one spot in the image I actually achieved a black point of 0. My whites are still at the 240 range which is still not bad. This is a paper that would be used in a photographers portfolio rather than on a wall.