The desired print results can be obtained by retaining the ink drops on its surface, which can be achieved only by coating the surface. The coating on inkjet media ensures that ink drops remain on the surface to have vividness and vibrancy of the image closely matched to the originals.

Modern printers have been engineered from the ground up to produce high-quality photo prints. To achieve this objective, they use some very sophisticated technology. Each printing head is manufactured with extremely high precision to ensure it delivers ink droplets with the correct sizes and places them on the printing paper with absolute accuracy. Anything less and the resulting print can suffer.

To achieve these objectives, each inkjet printer requires specially developed inks, which work best with specially-designed papers. Different types of printer have different requirements, as you can see in the ‘Know Your Printer’ box on this page. Your printer’s ink requirements are closely linked to the way it deposits tiny droplets of ink on the paper. With the diameters of some inkjet nozzles being smaller than a human hair, if the ink formulation is less than perfect, the nozzles will clog up and the printer’s performance will deteriorate. In a worst case scenario, the print head may need to be replaced.

Printer manufacturers invest a lot of time and money in producing ink formulations that blend together to produce correctly-balanced colours and subtle tonal nuances. This is no mean task, given that digital images can contain up to 16.7 million different hues and tones. The best digital photo printers are capable of reproducing all of these tones – as long as they have colour-accurate inks. If you want prints that look like the photographs you have taken, the colour-accurate inks from your printer’s manufacturer will give you the best results.

Coated papers are classified into several types such as "glossy paper," "semi-glossy paper," and "matte (non-glossy) paper," depending on the different features of their surfaces. Any of these papers can produce high-definition and quality full-color images. Glossy papers, having the same quality as cast-coated papers, are very glossy. Semi-glossy papers, having the same quality as art papers and A2 coated papers, are only slightly glossy. With regard to products other than paper, film products are also classified into the glossy type and matte type