Choosing your paper

What paper does to a photograph

A photograph on a screen is made of light shining through it. A photograph on paper is made of light bouncing off it, through a thin layer of ink. Gerhard Steidl, who prints the books he publishes, made that distinction in an interview with Jörg Colberg: a photograph on paper, which reflects light, is a different experience from one on a screen, which transmits it. It follows that the surface doing the reflecting matters. Writing for Aperture, Diane Smyth describes paper as a key factor in how a book feels in the hand, and then adds the part that is easy to forget: it also affects the images.

The biggest difference is between coated and uncoated paper. Coated paper has a smooth finish that holds the ink on its surface. Uncoated paper is absorbent, so the ink soaks in. Smyth sets out what that does. Coated or glossy papers typically hold the inks better than uncoated ones, so the images look sharper and more contrasted; but a glossy surface also reflects more light, which can make the images harder to see. Uncoated papers feel softer between the fingers and give images that are slightly less crisp. Printers describe the same thing from their side. One UK online printer’s paper guide says that on uncoated paper, which is highly absorbent, colours look more muted, while on coated paper they look bright and well defined.

Soaking in has a second effect. Each printed dot of ink spreads a little as the paper absorbs it, and on uncoated paper it spreads more. Printers call this dot gain. In the darkest areas, where there is most ink, the spread can cost depth and detail. A London printer that produced a 72-page book of Rankin’s photographs on an uncoated paper told the trade magazine Printweek that the difficulty was achieving dense colour while compensating for it. The printer ran the inks heavier than standard and watched the press to keep the dots, as its director David Arkell put it, open and clean in the shadows and the highlights. The book’s designer, Bryan Edmondson, had chosen uncoated paper because it gave a more natural look: the smooth but uncoated surface, he said, meant the book achieved much softer and more natural skin tones. He called it a bit of a leap of faith and was impressed with the result.

That is the trade in one example. Coated paper gives deeper blacks, brighter colour and finer detail, at the cost of some shine. Uncoated paper gives a softer, quieter picture and a surface that feels like paper rather than a photograph, at the cost of some depth. Steidl, who is described in The New Yorker as disliking the shiny paper often found in photography books, prefers uncoated even though it takes longer to dry and so costs more to print on. For John Gossage’s book, the magazine reports, he chose a matte, uncoated paper of the kind usually used for novels rather than photographs, taking Henri Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment as the model for the paper and the ink. Neither choice is right. They are two different zines made from the same file.

Finish and weight

A printer’s paper list usually offers three finishes and a few weights. The finishes are silk, gloss and uncoated (some printers call uncoated “matt”). Gloss is coated with a high shine; the printer’s guide quoted above says printed colours appear bright and vivid on it, and recommends it for colour photographs and eye-catching graphics. Silk is coated too, with a smooth surface and only a slight sheen; the same guide calls it its recommended choice for high-quality results, with colours bright and well defined and text easy to read, which is why it suits a zine with both pictures and words. Uncoated has a very soft finish and no sheen at all. Silk sits between the other two: most of the depth of gloss, with far less reflection.

The weights are given in gsm, grammes per square metre, which is simply how much one square metre of the paper weighs. A heavier paper is thicker and stiffer. The guide groups its weights in three bands. 90 to 115 gsm is light and cheap, and keeps postage down. 130 to 170 gsm is the popular middle, with little show-through (the picture on the other side of the page showing faintly through the paper) when printed on both sides. 250 gsm and above is card, for covers. A UK printer’s stapled booklet page offers much the same range: uncoated from 90 to 200 gsm, silk and gloss from 130 to 200 gsm, and a 300 gsm card for the cover. Show-through is a reason to think twice about the lightest papers for a zine of photographs: a dark picture on one side of a thin page can show faintly through whatever is on the other.

Weight has two limits in a stapled zine. The first is thickness at the fold. The stapled booklet page mentioned above sets a maximum of 76 pages on its lighter papers, or 64 with a card cover. Heavier paper makes a thicker fold, so if you want a heavy paper and a long zine, ask what the limit is at that weight. The launch formats here, up to 40 pages, sit well inside it either way. The second is the cover. The paper guide warns against adding a thick cover to a bound item with a low page count, because on a thin zine a heavy cover can stop the pages closing properly. A zine printed on one paper throughout, cover included, is a self-cover zine; it is the simplest to order, and at 16 or 24 pages it avoids that problem. A heavier cover earns its place as the page count grows.

Hold the sample next to a print. The paper will tell you more than its name will.

Choosing for your zine

Publishers tend to decide paper late and quickly, once the other decisions are made. Hans Gremmen, who runs the publisher Fw:Books, told Aperture that the first things he pins down are the size of the book and the number of pages: “When you know about those two things, then the paper choice follows quite quickly afterwards.” Those two things are already settled when you set up a zine here, so the question is narrower than it looks. For most zines it comes down to this. If the photographs depend on deep blacks, bright colour and fine detail, a coated paper, usually silk, will show them. If they live in the middle tones, or you want the zine to feel like a small book rather than a magazine, uncoated will suit them and will feel better in the hand. Black and white work is often the harder call, because it is the blacks that move most between papers, and the only way to know is to look.

That is what publishers do. Aperture’s Smyth describes the usual step before a book is printed: a few key photographs are chosen and printed on the paper to be used in the book, so the result can be judged on the real surface rather than on a screen. Gerhard Steidl told the World Photography Organisation that his first book was made from test prints on different papers and inks, to find exactly the right recipe. The same step is open to anyone ordering 50 zines from a website, in a simpler form. Ask the printer for paper samples. Hold each one next to a print of your darkest photograph and your lightest, in daylight, and the differences described above become plain. Then order one copy of the zine on the paper you are leaning towards before you order the rest (see Sending your zine to print). If two papers are close, order one copy on each. Two test copies cost less than one wrong edition.

There are senses beyond sight in this, and the people who make books for a living take them seriously. Steidl told Colberg that choosing paper takes a certain knowledge, and not only of its weight, which decides how the book handles later; The New Yorker describes him smelling a book as he opens it, because good paper and ink smell organic rather than chemical. “It is still all about paper,” he said. A zine is a smaller thing than a Steidl book, but it is held the same way, and the surface is the first thing a reader touches. Pick the paper that makes your photographs look most like themselves, and that you would like to hold.

Sources and further reading

• Diane Smyth, “How to Produce a Photobook”, Aperture (2 June 2022): paper as a key factor in a book’s tactile impact that also affects the images; coated papers holding ink better but reflecting more light; uncoated papers softer and slightly less crisp; a few key photographs printed on the book’s paper before printing; Hans Gremmen on deciding size and page count first.
• Jörg Colberg, “Photography Now: An Interview with Gerhard Steidl”, Conscientious (November 2009): “it is still all about paper”; picking paper requires knowledge beyond its weight, which influences handling; a photograph on paper reflects light where a screen transmits it.
• Rebecca Mead, “The Book Monk”, The New Yorker (22 May 2017): Steidl’s preference for uncoated paper over shiny, and its slower drying; John Gossage’s book on matte, uncoated paper usually used for literary books, after The Decisive Moment; smelling a book for organic rather than chemical paper and ink.
• World Photography Organisation, “We ask Gerhard Steidl all of our dumb questions about making photobooks” (June 2016): test prints on different papers and inks for his first book.
• Printweek, “The Colourhouse delivers photographic quality on uncoated stock”: Rankin’s 72-page book printed on uncoated paper; Bryan Edmondson on softer, more natural skin tones and a leap of faith; David Arkell on dot gain, dense colour, heavier ink and keeping the dots open in the shadows and highlights.
• Two UK online printers’ paper and stapled booklet pages, read in November 2026 and not named here: descriptions of silk, gloss and uncoated; gsm as grammes per square metre and its three bands; show-through; maximum page counts for stapled booklets; the advice against a thick cover on a low page count.