IMPRESSIONISTIC IMPRESSIONS

Along with not always being 100 percent certain you'll get these papers to load properly, there's also an element of chance to the results. Using the Hot and Cold Press media is certainly not like printing on Epson's other professional papers.

With Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster and Premium Semi-Gloss—my two personal favorites—I'm fairly certain of what I'll get. For one, I know that my images will usually be extremely sharp, have great color, and will look and feel like a traditional photograph. These are undeniably appealing things and the reason why I go back to Epson's printers and papers again and again. But it also gets a bit boring.

With the Hot Press and Cold Press papers, the results can be slightly more impressionist since the cotton paper will absorb the inks in unusual though often pleasing ways. During my testing I printed the same Macro image of a pollinating bee on top of a flower on each of the four papers and then compared them to a version I had printed on Semi-Gloss.

While the Semi-Gloss print was far more "accurate" with the selective focus on the bee's wing rendered beautifully, in the end I preferred the art papers. Though some detail was lost in the fiery red petals of the flower, they looked like they were created with an artist's brushstrokes which is the effect I wanted from the image. Also, the color itself was richer than I've seen from a Matte paper and tonal transitions weren't blotchy as on some watercolor papers I've tested.

This kind of paper is also wonderful for printing black-and-white images. I converted a series of aerials I shot over Olympic National Park into black-and-whites using Nik Silver Efex Pro and then printed them on the Hot Press Bright Papers. D-MAX was exceptional with the prints showing lots of detail in the dark shadows of the park's treeline. The cotton paper also produced a nice effect on the grain I had added—yes, added! —into the images via a Kodak T-Max film filter from the Nik software.