>>3373868>Has anyone messed with Ilford Multigrade Paper before?They're made in a different way.
With fibre paper, the emulsion is "soaked" within the paper fibers. So you get some texture in the print, if you like that.
With resin coated paper, the emulsion is coated on a resin layer on the top of the paper, plus the paper is completely sealed both top and bottom.
This gives a more clean or flat look.
So, they just look a bit different. But not much.
The biggest difference is in processing.
RC papers can be fixed, washed and dried to archival standards much, much faster than fibre papers. That's because the chemicals never soak the paper, just the emulsion layer, so they wash and dry quickly.
Also they dry very flat. Fibre paper curls because the emulsion layer on dries faster than the paper layer.
One side effect of the longer drying times, is that it's harder to judge exposure and contrast in fiber papers in your test strips, because the look changes quite a bit as the paper dries. So you have to wait for it to dry considerably, unless you have lots of experience and you know how it's gonna look when dry.
Without a print washer and drying press, I wouldn't bother with fibre paper at all.
I don't find the way it looks any better (or worse),, just a bit different.
Fibre paper used to be substantially more archival compared to the early rc papers, but not anymore. Actually, if you give the average person some fibre and rc papers to print on, I guarantee you the fibre prints will be less archival, because they'll underestimate how thorough of a washing they require to completely get rid of the fixer.
If you absolutely love the look and texture of a specific fibre paper, then it's worth printing your good prints on that. Or if you're selling """fine art""" prints, because there's still some lingering snobbery against rc papers and that "fibre=better quality".
But there's much more choice in finishes and grades in rc paper than fibre.
