Question: Do I have to buy photo paper that my printer manufacturer sells?
Many photo printer manufacturers will suggest that you purchase their photo paper for use with their photo printers. This is, they will say, the way to get the best quality photos -- and sometimes, they'll even suggest that the wrong paper can damage your printer.
Answer: In a phrase: paper is paper. There is no reason that you cannot use any manufacturer's paper in your photo printer (or, for that matter, in any printer). There are certain limitations, of course -- printers have a range of paper weights that they can handle, and a paper that is too light (say, rice paper), or too heavy (like a piece of cardboard) could indeed damage your printer. Check your manual to find out what the range of paper weights is.
However, past that, it doesn't matter whose paper you use. If you have, for example, a Canon photo printer, you can use paper from Canon, from Epson, from HP, from Staples, or from any other brand.
There are several reasons for this.
- What's important is not who made it, but the paper weight and brightness, whether it's glossy or matte, and the tightness of the weave. If you want a nice heavy photo paper with a matte finish, then look for those features -- it does not have to be by the same people who manufactured your printer.
- Speaking of which -- do you really think that Epson manufactures paper? Of course not -- they buy the paper from another company, and put their name on it. While the paper with their name on it may have specific qualities that Epson laid out, chances are that the exact same paper is sitting on the shelf under another name.
This is called OEMing -- Original Equipment Manufacturing. It means that one company creates a product, and several others simply put their names on it for marketing purposes.
- That being said, there might be some advantage to using a manufacturer's brand of paper. If your printer uses a special kind of ink, the manufacturer's paper may handle the ink slightly better than another's. However, that doesn't mean that another brand of paper will hurt your computer -- or even produce bad photos.
