I’ve been trying out a few printer papers this week. The paper on the left is a warm paper. While the paper on the right is a cool paper.
Do you notice the border around the actual images has a different colour temperature? I think the border on the left is more obvious, but the border on the right is less so. The right hand image’s border is cooler (more bluish).
There are really always two versions of an image when you print it: what you see on your monitor without any paper profile being previewed (I’d say this is what you had originally intended while editing the work). The second version is the printed version.
With the second version, the paper we choose to print on contributes (read that as affects) the final result. If our aim is to have the paper reproduce exactly what we saw on our monitor while editing then you may set yourself up for a lot of angst and madness. We have a few reasons why our images won’t look exactly the same, but it is possible to get them close, if you’re willing to spend time on accurate colour management, good monitor profiling, and also working through loads of different papers to get one that is closest to what you intended.
I think the better option is to think of the paper choice as an artistic one. Accept that each paper brings its own character to your work, and choose a paper that allows you to bring something out in the work in a way that you like.
In my example above, the original image without paper profiling is somewhere in the middle between the warm and cooler versions shown above. I think it’s hard to make a cold image remain cold if you print it on warmer paper and you will find that some of the cooler tones are ‘smothered’ by the character of the paper. But that may be a good thing if you find that printing a cold image on a cold paper makes it look ‘too cold’.
Then there is the effort of trying to tune the original image to be more cold on a warm paper, or less warm on a cooler paper. To me, that is really a defeating point. If you want your image to be cold, chose a cold paper. Why print it on a warm paper? The warm paper is going to do everything in its power to add warmth to the image and you will have a thankless task ahead of you. You will indeed be fighting upstream against the current.
So the best approach in my view, is to choose a paper that brings along its own artistic contribution. This may mean having to demo the same image on different papers (this is where paper proofing can help), but there’s no real substitute for actually printing it to see how it comes out.
I just love printing. It is always very satisfying for me to see my work become a tangible object. Looking at my work in print form often teaches me a lot about the actual image. I often see things differently, notice something in print that isn’t so obvious on the monitor, and yet when I review the monitor version can now see it. Printing is like removing a veil from the work. To finally see what the image really is, and whether it’s as strong as you thought it was. But it’s also a highly personal and artistic part of photography. And one that everyone who calls themselves a photographer should do.