Hahnemühle Fine Art Paper: William Turner Paper and Museum Etching Paper Comparison

In my last blog entry, I revisited an image I created over a decade ago. While I used Adobe Lightroom to finalize the image, I also utilized Topaz Gigapixel and Photoshop Generative AI to enhance the detail by tightening and sharpening the pixels. These tools helped me achieve a more painterly, detailed, and visually appealing final result.

The two contenders for the paper I planned to use were both from a Hahnemühle sample pack I purchased from B&H Photo a few months earlier. While I won’t claim to know everything about fine art papers, I want to express how excited I was with the final results I achieved using Hahnemühle Museum Etching paper and William Turner paper. Both are excellent fine art papers made from 100% cotton rag, with one key difference: their weight. The Museum Etching paper weighs in at 350 gsm, while the William Turner paper is 310 gsm.

Below is the Museum Etching paper on the left and the William Turner paper on the right. After a thorough comparison, the William Turner paper had the appropriate contrast; it retained detail and depth in dark and shadowy areas and allowed the colors in the image to stand out more than in the Museum Etching paper, as shown in the pictures below. It emerged as the clear winner for me. I did a black-and-white to be sure of my final decision.