Glossy, Matte or Lustre? Photo Paper Finishes Explained

Created by: PrintForFun. Reviewed and updated by the KT Colour team, October 2026.

The short answer: glossy gives the most saturated colour but reflects every light in the room, shows fingerprints, and sticks to the glass of a frame or the sleeve of an album in Singapore's humidity. Matte has no glare and no fingerprints but looks softer and less contrasty. Lustre, also called semi-gloss or satin, sits between them: nearly the colour of gloss with a fine texture that kills reflections. That is why our standard photo prints are all on Fujifilm lustre paper.

Most of us only ask for "the clearest print". The finish is the part of that question nobody thinks about, and it is the part that decides how the print looks on the wall and whether it survives ten years in an album.

Glossy

A smooth, mirror-like coating, like a phone screen out of the box. Colours look deep and blacks look black, and for a print held in the hand in soft light it is the most striking of the three. The problems appear later:

• Glare. Under a window or a downlight you see the lamp, not the photo. Behind glass it is worse, because you get two reflections.
• Fingerprints. Every touch shows, and wiping leaves streaks.
• Sticking. In humid air the glossy surface bonds to glass and plastic. Anyone who has peeled an old photo out of an album and left half the picture behind has met this.

Matte

A smooth but non-reflective surface. No glare from any angle, fingerprints are invisible, and it never sticks. The cost is punch: colours are flatter and the deepest blacks turn dark grey, so a matte print of a bright photo can look dull next to the screen. Matte suits black and white, soft portraits, and fine art papers like Hahnemühle cotton rag, where the paper's own texture is part of the look.

Lustre (semi-gloss, satin, pearl)

A very fine pebbled texture over a glossy base. The texture breaks up reflections so the print reads clearly under any light, and it hides fingerprints, while the base keeps most of the colour depth of gloss. It does not stick to glass. Every professional lab we know prints its standard work on lustre for these reasons, and so do we: all our photo prints from 2R to S12R are on Fujifilm lustre paper, and our poster prints use a lustre inkjet paper that behaves the same way.

Side by side

Which should you choose?

For photos going into frames, albums or a photo wall, lustre, and that is what you get when you order from us. For exhibition work, black and white, and anything you want to feel like a print rather than a photo, a matte fine art paper. Glossy we would only suggest for a print that will be looked at briefly and then put away, which is rare enough that we do not stock glossy paper.