Photo Paper

In the photography printing market there is a great variety of quality photo paper available. The two major categories for photo paper are laser photo paper and inkjet photo paper, each produced for a certain printing technology used in printers. To select the correct photo paper for your printer and your print job there are several factors to be kept in mind when buying paper.

The best inkjet photo paper for your project has to have the right opacity, brightness, weight, finish and caliper. The opacity of a paper is how much/little you can see through the paper. The higher the opacity the less the text will show up on the other side of the paper. The brightness refers to the white color of the paper, the whiter the brighter and photo papers should be between 90-100 for brightness. The weight of the paper refers to exactly that; the weight of the paper in is measured in lb. Due to certain ingredients heavier paper from one manufacturer is not necessarily thicker than the lighter one. Therefore the measure of the caliper exists, that will actually give the thickness of the paper. Photo paper should have a caliper between 2 and 10 mils. Arriving at the last factor to be considered, the finish. Most people prefer glossy photo paper for their prints to have nice and shiny pictures. But sometimes especially for certain print jobs you might rather use a matte or semi-glossy finish.

Most companies that manufacture printers and photo printers also offer their own range of paper on the market. There is Epson photo paper, Kodak photo paper, HP photo paper and even Canon photo paper. Usually the difference between Epson and HP photo paper as well as other manufacturers paper is minimal if paper form the same quality range with the same weight, brightness and other factors is chosen. For example a Epson photo quality inkjet paper gets very similar ranking to any other manufacturers quality inkjet paper. Sometimes the paper sold by manufacturers is slightly adjusted to the printer sold by the company and therefore might give you a better quality, this is usually so minimal that it is not always worth to pay the higher price that brand name papers will cost compared to no name and discount photo papers.
If you wan to be especially creative and create your own fridge or business magnets, some companies even offer now a magnetic photo paper. It is paper that is coated with a magnetic layer so it can stick to metal surfaces but still thin enough to fit through a regular printer and of a good enough quality paper to make a nice magnet. Another way to get creative is by using canvas photo paper. By printing pictures or digital paintings on canvas paper the print gets the unique texture of a canvas through the paper and almost looks like an expensive painting bought from an artist.