Photo Paper Types and Weights: Lustre, Poster, Fine Art and What gsm Means

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

The short answer: for everyday photos, albums and frames, lustre photographic paper is the right choice and the one we use for all standard prints. For posters, a heavier satin inkjet paper. For art, exhibition work and anything meant to last a lifetime, a cotton-rag fine art paper such as Hahnemühle Photo Rag. Paper weight, the gsm number, tells you how thick and stiff the sheet is, not how good the print will be.

Lustre photographic paper

Our photo prints from 2R to S12R are made on Fujifilm photographic paper with a lustre finish, which is what most people picture when they think of a photo. Lustre sits between glossy and matte: a fine texture that cuts reflections and hides fingerprints, with colours as deep as gloss. It does not stick to the glass in a frame or the sleeve of an album, which glossy paper does in our humidity.

Poster paper

For A2 and larger, labs switch to a wide-format inkjet printer. Ours prints posters on a 260 gsm lustre photo inkjet paper: a resin-coated, bright white sheet with the same fine lustre surface as a photo print. Colours are vivid, and it is strong enough to mount on foam board or roll for a tube. Our poster prints and IKEA-size prints use it. For something that will be framed under glass this is all you need.

Fine art papers

Fine art paper is made from cotton or alpha-cellulose rather than ordinary wood pulp. It is acid-free, has little or no optical brightener, and is coated to take pigment ink. The result is a matte print with a softer, deeper look than photographic paper, and a life measured in decades rather than years. We print on three Hahnemühle papers:

• Photo Rag 308: smooth, 308 gsm, 100 percent cotton. The standard for photography exhibitions and portfolio prints.
• German Etching 310: a visible, velvety texture, 310 gsm. Suits paintings, illustration and anything that should look like a print rather than a photo.
• FineArt Pearl 285: a pearl sheen with the colour depth of a photo, on a bright white, acid-free alpha-cellulose base of 285 gsm. The choice for photographers who want a photo look with less glare than gloss.

Canvas and metal

Two other surfaces worth knowing about. Canvas is a woven cotton-poly fabric with a visible texture, stretched over a wooden frame so it needs no glass; it softens detail slightly and suits large wall pieces. ChromaLuxe metal is the opposite: the image is infused into a coated aluminium sheet, giving the sharpest detail and most saturated colour of anything we make, with a surface you can wipe clean.

What gsm means

Grams per square metre: the weight of one square metre of the paper. It is a proxy for thickness and stiffness. Higher is not better, it is just heavier, and the right weight depends on the job.

Paper brightness: blue-white or warm white

Most papers are not naturally bright white. Photographic and poster papers contain optical brightening agents that reflect a little blue, which makes whites look crisp and colours punchy. Over many years and in strong light those agents fade and the paper warms slightly. Many cotton fine art papers are made with very little or none, so they start a touch warmer and stay that way. For a family photo in an album, bright white is the right look. For a print meant to outlast you, choose a paper with as little brightener as possible.