First some technical stuff

We do not have as many choices with inkjet mainly because EPSON printers require paper to be coated with a receptive layer. Without the receptive coating, the paper will absorb the ink resulting in soft details, and a generally dull color gamut. IRIS printing is an exception to this which is one of the reasons why I still maintain IRIS printers in my studio. I can print on literally any absorbant paper and still create great color.

An important quality in selecting a paper is whether or not it is considered to be archival or not. In the context of paper, archival means that it can be stored over a long period of time without worrying whether it will disintegrate or deteriorate. The biggest factor in paper deterioration is acid. So you want to make sure that if you are intending to produce prints which are to last more than a year - that you select papers which are acid-free. There is a lot of misconceptions about 100% rag being the only acid-free paper. Not true! Certainly rag (cotton) papers do not have acid, and paper from trees does. But paper made from trees can be made to a pH neutral content. We call these high quality wood papers "alpha cellulose". You still need to look for the acid-free spec.

What about lingens? This is a new worry being perpetuated by many alarmists right now. Lingens are never found in the cotton plant so a lingen-free 100% rag paper is a given! Would we not want lingens in alpha-cellulose papers if we could avoid it? Yes if we could. Lingen can break down over time.

In general, cotton papers will resist becoming brittle best. I would recommend you use cotton (rag) papers for your best work. But it doesn't end at cotton and pH neutral when it comes to long term archivability. How you store your prints is as important as how you produce them in the first place. If you take acid-free paper and store it in cardboard, within a year the acid from the cardboard can yellow the archival paper! Make certain you store your prints in acid-free sleaves, or portfolios, or boxes. Steel flat files are a safe storage option with one caveat!

This is a big caveat too. It is well documented that the Hahnemuhle coating, while being arguably the best for dMax in the industry, is also the most sensitive to environmental conditions. Several of my customers have experienced yellowing of their Hahnemuhle papers when exposed to steel flatfiles, plastic, darkroom fumes, blueprint fumes, tape, and rubber. The coating is sensitive to out-gassing. I will point out that this does not always occur with each roll or sheet. But it happens often enough to warrant extra-special care with this brand of high-quality paper.

Choices

I used to have a several sheets of paper I printed on which I simply loved the feel of. They were thick and had textures which had a good "feel" to them. However, at an exhibition of my photographs I noticed that the lighting caused the textured surface of my photographs to look like thousands of tiny hills and valleys. I was not at all pleased by this.

With that said, I often do like to see a very textural paper during an enhibition. But it is dependent upon the type of work I am viewing. In the early 1990s when my studio was first making IRIS prints for artists, the paper of choice was an impossibly thick and textured Arches watercolor sheet. But photographers were coming to the IRIS process because it produced images that were somewhere between being a photograph and a watercolor. I had the pleasure of working with Somerset to develop the very smooth Somerset Velvet paper. When we began printing photographs on this paper, they began to loose their "watercolor" appearance.

The paper surface is paramount to the context in which you want to present your work. I recommend smooth surfaces for photographs which are intended to look so. I reserve the textured papers for works which are either fine art reproductions or for photographs in which one wishes to change