Photo paper... Branded or not?

[JJ!]

Branded photo paper is quite expensive so was looking online at paper from other companies.

Anyone used alternative brands as below with fairly decent results? Not looking for wedding album quality - just nice clean prints.

To me this one looks pretty decent price:

http://www.ink2paper.com/webshop/glossy-photo-paper/7-x5/7-x5-gloss-photo-paper-300gsm/

This one a little too cheap though - £23 for 200 sheets (400 in current offer)

http://www.photopaperdirect.com/pro...um-Heavyweight-260g-Buy-200-Get-200-Free.html

 

[viewfromthenorth]

Can't comment on these as I've never used them. What I will say is that the experience I have had with unbranded stuff has been awful - bad colour reproduction, fading after a few years, etc. The exception was some Jessops premium stuff I used a few years ago, which was pretty good, but probably isn't available now.

Personally I use 6x4 paper from the printer OEM (HP) for snaps, and more expensive Fotospeed A3 for competitions, portfolio's, etc. The HP paper is excellent, produces really nice prints.

For larger quantities though, I get them done at Tesco, or send them to Photobox, tends to be cheaper.

 

[Major Eazy]

Branded photo paper is quite expensive so was looking online at paper from other companies.

Anyone used alternative brands as below with fairly decent results? Not looking for wedding album quality - just nice clean prints.

To me this one looks pretty decent price:

http://www.ink2paper.com/webshop/glossy-photo-paper/7-x5/7-x5-gloss-photo-paper-300gsm/

This one a little too cheap though - £23 for 200 sheets (400 in current offer)

http://www.photopaperdirect.com/pro...um-Heavyweight-260g-Buy-200-Get-200-Free.html

The best thing for you to do is to buy in smaller sizes (actually I meant smaller number of sheets,) if there's a 20 sheets, buy it, if not, then see if there's a 50 sheets, just find one that got lower number of sheets. Then you do some printing.

If they turn out to be good enough for your liking, then you stick with what you bought, next time you need more paper, you just buy bigger pack, 200 sheets, 500 sheets, whatever you want.

If they don't do well for you, say they don't feel right for your needs, then look around for different brands, if you find a different brand interesting, again buy smaller, 20 or 25 or 50 sheets or so, try them, again if you like it, stick with it and buy bigger, if not, try different.

Some superstores like Staples or similar would sometimes have one pack opened, so you could take a paper and feel it, or they would have a range of samples, where you can see the effects, but otherwise buying from the Internet is a case of trail and error. You got to order it, try it out, if it don't suit your needs, then next time you need more paper, try different brand. Hence the idea to buy smaller number of sheets.

 

[JJ!]

^^ good idea - they do smaller packs in both brands, so will order that and see how it looks!