With the passage of time the printers have been upgraded to print on various types of media or paper such as matte card stock, glossy photo paper, transparencies and colored paper. Latest versions of the printers are quite apt at delivering high quality prints on such varieties of papers, you have to mention the type or profile of paper you will be printing on though. By mentioning the profile of paper you will be telling the printer about the essentials such as the thickness of paper (this will help the printer to adjust its pattern), should the printer head be placed close or far from the surface of the paper (as ink spreads differently depending on the type of paper), what should be the speed of moving the paper through the printer (as ink dries at different speeds depending on the variety of paper), etc. Luckily most of printers available today are pre-programmed and they can handle the varieties of paper with ease. Yet there are some criteria that should be kept in mind while choosing the paper for printing project:

• Consider the files that you will be printing. Types of projects should decide the choice of paper as only specific types of paper can give good output to a project. If you are looking to print a project that involves written documents or spreadsheets, then you may opt for the plain paper and save some money. But if you want to print a photo and display it on your wall then the cheap quality plain paper will not provide the required reproduction, in such cases you should choose the best quality photo paper. On the other hand if you want to print your business cards then you should look to go for a heavier paper which is known as cardstock or cover weight or pre-pressed cardstock. Such paper has an adhesive backing that can be peeled off.
• In case you are using white paper, make sure the brightness rating for the paper is checked. This will give you an idea of how well the paper will reflect light. Higher rating means that text printed on the paper will look brighter. Inexpensive or plain paper has an average brightness rating of 80 and when graphics are printed on such a paper they look dull. When these same graphics are printed on a paper having a rating of 100 it looks vibrant.
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• The weight of paper should also be checked. The standard printing paper used is of 20-24 pounds per paper. Heavier weights will make the paper thicker and thus they will suit the requirements of certain projects. If the material you are printing will be handled a lot, then it is wise to opt for heavier paper. If the paper will be used just once or twice or will be inserted within a covering then the light weight paper is a good choice.
• It is also important to consider the surface of the paper. While most of the projects involving printing of photos use glossy paper, some also use matte finish to provide extra touches. If you are looking to print fancy invitation cards then you may use vellum, other paper surfaces such as canvas and egg shell are also available for the customers.

With the help of the above given tips you will be able to make the best choices of printing paper. If you hire the services of a renowned printing service provider like PrintPapa then you will not have to worry about the quality of the paper. They have years of experience in dealing with printing projects of various sorts. They deal with the printing of various promotional materials such as short run books, banners, brochures, postcards, notepads, labels & stickers, etc.