Premium 13" x 19" Cold Press Watercolor Paper for Fine Art Printing - 25 Sheets Acid-Free Artist Paper - Ideal for Watercolor Painting, Inkjet Printing & Mixed Media Art Projects

This is a side-by-side comparison of FinestraArt Cold Press Watercolor Fine Art Inkjet Paper and Epson Cold Press Bright, including photos. I’ve been using Epson Cold Press Bright to make prints of my watercolor paintings for over a year. I’m not sure if they’re phasing it out but the larger sizes seem to be less available recently (I order monthly). If Epson is replacing it with their Watercolor Paper Radient White, I’m not interested, as it is much thinner. Finestra showed up in the sponsored suggestions so I ordered a box of 13x19, 25 sheets, to test it out. For the comparison prints I took 13x19 sheets of both brands and cut them down to a few 8x10’s.Brightness - To my eye and also in the photos, Finestra seems to be a shade brighter than Epson. The two test prints were done with the exact same printer settings on a Canon Pixma iX6820 and mostly look the same but you can see a slight difference in the male cardinal’s chest (the red one). I didn’t adjust the brightness in the photos because I didn’t want to wash out the texture detail.Thickness - They both look and feel like the same thickness and sturdiness, to me. Epson is listed at 325 gsm and Finestra at 300.Texture - Finestra’s texture looks more pronounced than Epson. This is okay but I wouldn’t want it any more prominent than this.Packaging - FinestraArt’s and Epson’s big boxes have about the same amount of buffer and protection inside. The only thing I would like to see Finestra do differently is to NOT have sheets of brown cardboard in direct contact with the paper. It’s on top and bottom of the stack, inside the plastic sleeve.All in all, I like the FinestraArt paper and will be buying more of the various sizes.