Papers question

It's really difficult to find good paper here in Greece. I am now trying to make a list of the papers available and see which of those are suitable for Alt-Printing, since I am trying to start doing this once again.

I have found the following:

Arches watercolour
Canson Fontenay
Canson Montval
Fabriano (Rosaspina ?)
Whatman
Saunders Waterford
Saunders Waterford Rough

Would you be kind enough to comment on the above papers, according to your experience with Alt-photo printing ? I have started doing some tests with them, but it takes time and effort and it would be helpful to have some feedback to help me with some of them, at least.

George,

which process would you like to try? Papers are suited differently for different processes.
Generally, I would say forget Arches watercolour for metal salt processes. Arches Montval is a cheap paper which is, if i remember correctly, not totally unsuited, but there are better ones. I don't know Fontenay nor Fabriano Rosaspina, but Artistico is good for some processes, though it is alkaline buffered (you don't want this for most processes), as is Saunders Waterford. I use it frequently, but I would not recommend it to a beginner.

Whatman Watercolour is, for al I know, an expensive but quite good paper. I have not used it for a while, but it used to be not buffered.

Generally for metal salt processes, I would go with hot pressed papers.

Choises for gum prints and the like may be quite different. By the way, there is no reason why you should order a paper in Greece.

Of the papers you listed, I've used Arches (hot press) with cyanotype and brown print with good results, and I've used the Canson Montval (cold press) with cyanotype, also with good results. My favorite paper is not listed though, and I've only tested these two papers a few times so your results may not the same as mine, but I think that they are good papers for those processes.

- Randy