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The Lyson Gloss Fine Art paper has a brilliant white base and glossy textured finish reminiscent of traditional darkroom fibre-based papers. 100% alpha cellulose paper base. Compatible with dye and pigment inks.

My personal comments: Back in the late 1970's, I worked in an engineering company in Edenbridge, Kent directly opposite what was the first professional colour printing school and laboratory in the UK: Colour Processing Laboratories Limited, or CPL for short. This small darkroom printing school became the centre of excellence for the early darkroom colour printing, taking on board many classic techniques and materials from far and wide, expanding over time into one of the largest professional colour laboratories in the world. As an engineer, I was occasionally called over to see if we could make certain film and paper processing equipment that they could not source elsewhere, and my own company benefited, as we would often end up with a product that we could sell to all the other colour labs in the Industry. In my time over there, I would often see incredibly detailed classic monochrome photographs from the 1940s and 50s and 60s, processed in various esoteric ways, using materials with evocative names like Record Rapide, Baryta (barium sulphate), Kodachrome process, Ektachrome process, and of course the luxurious deep colour Cibachrome process. The leading photo companies of the time, Kodak, Agfa-Gevaert, Ilford and the rest, were able to achieve an incredible mid-range tonality to their fibre-based printing papers, and with the development of multi-grade papers, were able to make darkroom printing far more flexible and useable to reasonably inexperienced darkroom workers.

With our industry being taken over almost completely by the digital printing process, where images jump directly from camera to paper, I think we have forgotten a lot of what has been left behind, in terms of subtlety and smoothness of mid-tone, together with an almost indefinable loss of 'feel' to our prints.

Luckily, there are some Lyson Chemists who, like me, remember those days, and have selected two medias which re-create accurately the feel, texture and weight of those classic fibre-based papers:

The first is the Lyson 280gsm Gloss Fine Art, which contrary to it's name, will give you a silky smooth slightly subdued gloss, on an ultra-white base colour for super clean highlights, and a coating which accentuates that classic super-smooth mid-tone tonality.

Unlike other Fine Art media, it is debatable whether it is best to use Matte Black or Photo Black pigment channels – I personally think it is down to personal preference – my choice would be Photo Black pigment channel.

Lyson 280gsm Gloss Fine Art – if you liked fibre based darkroom hand prints, you will love this paper!