When to Use Matte Photo Paper

When I first started to do printing I did not know whether to use matte photo paper or another style. It seems like there used to be easy choice with only a couple different paper choices to pick from. These days there is a wide range of photo paper but let us take a moment to look at Matte photo paper and see how it can be.

If the goal of your printing is to take the photos from your digital camera and print them out in a high quality manner, then you do not want to use matte paper. Matte is good for a lot of different things but printing for photos is not one of them. Typically you are going to want to use a glossy or high gloss photo paper to print photography pictures.

Matte paper is more suitable for printing that is text related. This means if you are printing off a short story or essay for school, that matte photo paper would be ideal. The reason it is so good for tax is that matte paper is less shiny and produces much less glare then glossy paper. This means it is much easier to read text and graphics, but is not very suitable printing pictures.

There is an in between style of paper called semi matte which is also referred to often as silk photo paper. This can be a great choice if your goal is to buy one style of paper in bulk and try to get a better value for your money. Silk paper has the ability to be used for printing photos as well as looking good for text. It will never produce as high quality of a photo image as the glossy paper would, but you will still be able to create a good look with your photos. Similarly, silk photo paper does have a little gloss to it which means there is a little bit more glare in shininess and text will be not quite as easy to read as it would be with full matte paper.

Overall it really depends on your printing needs and your budget for photo paper. It is always a good idea to use the sample paper that came with your printer to understand how the different styles of paper affect the final product. This way you can get a great idea of how glossy paper and matte paper differ in their look, and be able to make a better decision as to what kind of paper fits your personal needs.

One interesting tidbit to keep in mind is that am glossy prints while looking and feeling different will display a similar result if they are placed under glass. This means you can use either style of paper to get the same result, so it is worthwhile to find out what is the least expensive style of paper if you know that the end result is going to be placed under glass.

As you can see matte photo paper has an important use when it comes to your printing needs. Make sure to print a few different examples on the various styles of paper to find out what works best for you.