Choosing Photo Paper: Discover the Key to Printing Stellar Photos at Home

Trying to choose the photo paper that would be best for your needs?  Our society is well into the digital age, and computers are becoming more and more of an essential tool for photographers and not only, with each passing day.  Whether you’re just an amateur photo-taker or a total shutterbug, the days of drug store photo developing are nearly extinct.  Editing and printing your photos from home is a breeze with the right equipment, but it is vital to educate yourself about choosing the right photo paper to get the best results for your photos.

 You might think that the key to printing great photos from home revolves around your type of printer and its ink, but that’s only part of the process.  Photo paper comes in a countless number of finishes and weights; these include matte photo, satin photo, semi-gloss photo, glossy photo, high gloss photo, premium photo and professional photo paper, in different paper weights and sizes and even specialty photo papers such as canvas, magnetic paper, T-shirt transfer paper and more. With so many choices, there’s no doubt that you’ll find a photo paper that will suit your photo project.  However, before grabbing any photo paper that catches your eye, make sure that you read the product details to ensure that it will work with your printer.  For example, you’d think that laser printers would be best for color photo printing, but the heat that laser printers generate can be disastrous on some finishes of inkjet photo paper.

Once you know what types of photo paper will suit your printer at home, choose whichever type will be most convenient for you and best fits the purpose of your pictures.  For example, glossy photo paper is designed to show off the vivid colors in a photo, but may produce some glare due to the reflective finish.  If glare is a concern, satin or semi-gloss photo paper resists glare and fingerprints on a photo’s surface.  Professional photo paper typically costs more, but the paper itself is sturdy, dries quickly, gets a better quality print-out and it may possibly last longer. 

The art of photo-printing can be tricky to master. You will have to play around with the printer setting to get the best result. If you buy non-OEM brands, like instead of a pricier HP Photo paper you decide to go for Royal Brites Photo Paper, you have to choose the setting "Other Photo Papers" instead of HP Photo Paper. This is when you print using an HP printer. The same applies to all OEM printers.

Once you determine the right photo paper for your printer (and your lifestyle) and you master the best settings for that paper, you will have great photos that will last long enough to be shared by future generations.