Cotton Paper by Crane Museo

This is my first post on Leafygreen.info. My name is Scott Wyden and I’m a photographer. You can see my photos at scottwyden.com. For my first review, I’m going to talk about Crane Paper’s Museo 100% cotton paper. The paper is not made from organic cotton, but it’s not made from traditional fibers either. The paper does not contain any acid, no fluorescent whiteners are added either in the creation of the 100% cotton paper.

Crane sent me samples of all their paper choices for use on an Epson 9800 44″ Wide Format Printer. When you request for paper samples, manufactures send 3 or 4 sheets of each in 8.5×11. Crane decided to send even more. I have been working on a project for my photography and decided to try some of those photographs to test the paper. I did these tests on the Epson 9800 to use the K3 Pigment Inks.

With the paper, Crane included instructions on using the ICC color profiles in Photoshop for Mac and Windows. I set up the first image for the Portfolio Rag. The photo is of the sky with 1 large dense cloud. The sky is a vivid blue, and the cloud is a mix of bright white and a medium gray. The print came out flat. I was very surprised to see that even when using the right settings and profiles supplied from Crane, the image was so bland. I was not thrown from Crane just from one print. I set the next image up for the Silver Rag. Crane’s Silver Rag paper is ideal for Black and White photography. The photo I used was another sky scene with multiple clouds and almost the entire grayscale can be seen from white to black. This print came out beautifully. Checking with the Colorvision’s SpyderPrintFixPlus where true black is 0 and true white is 255, the black was reading as 4. The brightest part of the clouds were reading at 198, meaning there was not one spot in the print that is paper white but it is white enough that you can see the difference from gray. There is detail all throughout. This makes a fine art matte (rag) paper top notch quality.

I have not yet tested the other papers, but will review them once I get my tests done.
Besides from the other Crane papers, I will be testing and hopefully reviewing Moab & Hahnemuhle papers. Some of which are also 100% natural.