Oh, I am so happy to answer these questions because printing is the bane of my design + photography existence. First you need to know as far as photo printing I am new to this. I keep waaaay to many pics on my hard drive (external mind you but hard drive all the same). For external hard drives I love mine, it was inexpensive and holds a TON. They have one called the passport now that is a lot smaller and portable, which I wish they had when I got mine...
{western digitial external hard drive}
Up until a couple of months ago I didn't do much photo printing but I did do a lot of stationery comp printing (on a cheap HP). The two are so different for me. What I want out of a stationery comp is different from what I need in a photo. I must add here that my screen and printer are NOT calibrated. It's an expensive investment for a hobby but if you feel you want to get your printer and screen colors to match this is the way to do it:
I did see there was a $65 version on Amazon but I don't know anything about it, do you? It's called Spyder Express. So this is how the pro's, semi-pro's and obsessed novices with dinero do it. I do trial and error (mostly error) I see how my printer is printing and adjust my colors to get the desired effect. This is one of the reasons I haven't sent my images out to a professional printing house because I like to have some control over my colors and as a designer I find myself more interested in creating an interesting image then full on accuracy of my images. An example would be the Ferris Wheel image I really wanted to get watermelon and an aqua sky and when I printed I was getting orange and green, colors ick! So I just adjusted my screen colors until they printed the way I wanted, possibly the least effective way of doing anything but I am renown for doing things the hard way.
My favorite, favorite paper is the Staples double-sided matte, the colors are really rich and I was using this to print out all my press kit images it looks super unique and people always comment. Matte is chic, this is an uncoated paper, so it is a true matte and the price is right. My suspicion is that Epson is private labeling for Staples, this paper is top notch in quality.
{staples double-sided matte photo paper}
Mrs. Limestone asked why I wasn't sending out my images, so my brief answer would be control of color, quality, time etc. The gloss supreme paper I mentioned yesterday with the printer gives me better gloss prints than most professional labs I've looked into it's just hands down gorgeous! (this is from someone that never liked glossy prints before either) Also the printer at work (the R1900) can print really large sizes which can get spendy when you send out. The Metallic papers that Alex mentioned in the comments are AMAZING but I haven't seen them readily available to print at home so it must be for outside lab processing. I have heard just wonderful things about this company, plus they print on watercolor paper which has the same look (color wise) as the matte print paper above, yes with texture added but the color is different than your traditional photo printing hard to explain unless you have seen it in person. I ordered a sample pack from them of their printing paper types but haven't sent in any files, if I do I will be sure to blab what my experience is. Really though I think most versions of home printers don't print photo's on traditional photo paper that well. I hated the results from both my HP and Epson on the photo paper but liked them very much on the matte paper. So if you can't afford the Epson large format printers I think the next best thing for home photo printing is just buying a pack of the matte paper. If you need to cut to size my new favorite paper trimmer is this one:
{making memories paper trimmer}
I could have devoted a whole post to this trimmer, it's THAT great. It won't cut in bulk but it's pretty fool proof, it has a magnetic ruler to hold your paper in place (super strong) and it folds in half for easy storage. I hope this helps in your home photo printing quest...
