For their digital photography, the professionals expect a true archival print media in a variety of weights and textures of surface. The photo Industry is providing acid free, one hundred percent cotton, hot press paper that is coated on both sides to get versatility.
Additionally the digital photo paper is also free from lignin and chlorine to retain the image quality over a longer period. The digital photo paper is specially coated to get realistic and vibrant colour prints. The semi-gloss paper which comes as a sample along with the digital or laser printer produces good results but they are very expensive.
A good quality digital photo paper should reproduce true photographic gloss, white colours at its brightest and in highest resolution. They are capable of retaining a sharp and well defined image and text with colours appearing true to the originals and with excellent clarity.
Extreme care should be taken to use the correct type of digital photo paper which is most suitable for the printer being used.
Using the fuser technology, Laser printers use a heated roller to fuse the toner to the paper. When glossy photo paper is used in a laser printer there is a possibility of the fuser melting the glossy film covering the photo paper thereby ruining the paper and also causing damage to the printer. This might not happen every time but extreme care should be taken to use appropriate photo paper when a laser printer is used.
Photo paper contains seven layers. They are arranged in the order of a resin coated layer, base which contains a layer of high compressed paper, again followed by a resin coated layer, brightness controlled layer, whiteness controlled layer, color stabilized layer and image formed layer to get a perfect output.
Heavy weight photo paper normally refers to higher end photo paper having a thickness of 8mil or above.
The usual terms to define photo paper finishes are semi-gloss, gloss and high gloss, each term referring to the surface shine of the photo paper. A less shiny coated finish is available in semi gloss surfaced photo paper which bears a satin finish.
Images which appear without any shine, non reflective and soft can be produced by using matte finished photo paper.
Whiteness of the photo paper gives brightness to it. Brightness of a photo paper is expressed as numbers starting from one to hundred.
