“Regular” gold foil and glitter-style printables or prints won’t use any kind of gold ink for printing unless they state that they are really metallic, they use real gold foil or they are printed with metallic ink. If that’s not the case you can assume they will just print like a photography of glitter or foil, using standard inks.
The one shown above is a fashion sketch, in gold foil effect printed in luster photo paper.
Metallic glossy photo paper
From my point of view, the BEST paper for printing anything with glitter or faux gold foil effect is the Metallic Fine Art Paper. It features a high-gloss, metallic surface that delivers sharp, vibrant, and phenomenally rich-looking prints.
This is a quick video I made, trying to capture how this paper reflects light: (Sorry for the quality, this paper is very hard to take pictures of)
It looks way better in person, I promise!
Let’s see a few more pictures of this paper:
Glossy photo paper
This paper is the one you’d find at most photo labs. It goes well for printables with glitter or faux gold foil effect. The main difference is that all the surface of the print would be glossy. Even if it has a white background. A print in Metallic photo paper will reflect light mostly where there is ink applied on the paper.
Printing in glossy photo paper in a photo lab is great for wedding signs or table numbers, for example. Something that you are not going to keep after the event.
As I said before, these papers are hard to photograph, due to their glossiness, so I scanned a couple images. Basically the printed item looks exactly like the digital printable image:
Semi-glossy photo paper (sometimes called luster paper)
If you are looking for something that’s not that glossy, you can have your files printed in semi-gloss photo paper. It has a grainy texture and it looks great for bright colors and gold effects. Two pictures:
Satin photo paper.
Frames with plexy or glass
The picture below shows a custom map I made. Land masses are faux gold foil and the background is navy blue+white striped pattern. As you can see, it looks great and the paper it has been printed on is not that important because the frame has an acrylic sheet on top of the print.
