Why Glossy Paper?
Aug 4th, 2007 by John Setzler
Traditions are hard to break. Glossy photo prints are one of those traditions that just bug me. I’ll never understand the advantages of printing photography on glossy paper. Is glossy paper just expected by the masses as a traditional medium for a photo print? If you are a professional photographer, do your customers expect and request glossy prints? Do you provide glossy prints by default? If so, why? Is it simple tradition? I really don’t understand this phenomenon. Someone should educate me on why anyone would ever want a glossy print.
Glossy prints may look nice when you hand one to somebody, but the beauty of it stops right there. What’s going to happen to this print next? The recipient certainly isn’t going to just hold it in their hand and look at it forever. It’s going to be filed away in a box or a garbage can, a photo album, or its going to be framed. With the box or garbage can solution, it doesn’t really matter what type of paper the print is on. If it’s going into an album or a frame, the problems of a glossy finish surface rapidly. Glossy photo papers have two inherently ugly properties about them. First of all, they like to stick to things, including photo album sleeves and glass. The second problem is that the glossy paper surface is highly reflective. Glare becomes a problem when trying to view the image. When you put a photograph that has a reflective surface in a photo album or behind glass, the reflective properties increase with the frame glass or the clear album sleeve presence. As we all know, it’s annoying to have to move around to find a viewing perspective that has minimal glare. It’s also quite ugly when a glossy print sticks to an album sleeve or frame glass. It makes the print appear to have wet spots on it. From my experience working in a framing shop, it can be impossible to remove one of these photos from an album or frame without destroying the print. Another minor annoying factor of glossy paper is that it shows finger prints. We all know that one should not touch the surface of photos whenever possible, but inevitably, it happens. So, beyond the pretty sheen and initial viewer impact of a glossy print, why else would anyone want one?
What are the alternatives?
One word: Matte.
A true matte paper is hard to get unless you are making your own inkjet photographic prints. Most digital printing services offer a matte paper, but it’s not a true matte. It’s more of a textured gloss that is often referred to as a luster paper or even a semi-gloss. These papers are better that glossy papers, but they are still reflective to some degree. They don’t stick to glass and album sleeve surfaces as much, but they can still stick. A true standard matte paper has the look and feel of something like index card stock. It has very little texture and no reflective properties. With the right printing system, the color saturation and clarity are both excellent on matte paper, and blacks are much deeper than on glossy and luster papers.
There are various forms of matte papers also that can enrich your prints. Some of the textured matte papers such as watercolor and heavyweight fine art rag bond papers make beautiful prints. If you haven’t tried these, you should. You should also educate your customers on the benefits of using them. Most matte papers (when printing on photo quality inkjet systems) have a longer archival life rating than glossy papers do.
When enlarging images (traditionally), glossy paper adds one or more zones of tonal gradation over matte. Matte rhymes with flat and it is. :-)
The surface qualities are particularly important in the Zone III and below range (blacks). If the goal is Zone V. Go with matte. If the goal is to show the full dynamic range of the image, go with glossy.
Part of the problem you may experience is the difference between F surface resin-coated paper and F surface fiber. RC paper is cheap, highly reflective and sticky. High-quality fiber papers require more work and don’t have these problems.
As far as consumer printer paper, it’s important to match the paper to the printer. This eliminates many of the problems associated with both surfaces. However, it’s vital with F surfaces.
Mark, thanks for the response. You are the first person who has ever been able to give me a decent answer to this question. I still don’t understand the detail though. A majority of the prints I make myself are black and white, and ‘flat’ is hardly the description I would make, when comparing matte vs glossy from my own printing system (Epson 2200). I do use Epson papers and inks.
Shoot a Zone III and below image (the tred of a car tire). Set the black point and ignore the white point. Next, print it with (equal quality) matte and gloss surface papers with high-quality photo ink. Then, look at Zone I in each of the prints.
Matte surfaces scatter light and take the richness out of the black areas. This is because stray light is refracted over the dark areas. Meanwhile, the glossy surface should produce a deep, dark void. It’s reflective, but it reflects light in direct lines rather than diffusion.
BTW, if you need the best quality print, find a lab with a LightJet laser printer. It’s a photo-chemical process from a digital image. The reproduction quality is finally what I’d consider acceptable.