For over 150 years the photographic industry has been coating media for imaging applications. This experience spans both rigid and flexible media and encompasses many issues pertaining to the adhesion of material to these substrates. For many of these years work concentrated on swellable polymer layers but with the emergence of inkjet in photo imaging this broadened to cover porous coatings too.The paper covers the experience that may be transferable to media for Digital Fabrication. By way of example, it covers the coating of swellable layers on glass and flexible substrates and the variables that were routinely used to influence the physical and printing characteristics. It also covers the issues of printed inkjet spot morphology and the ways in which the characteristics of the coatings can influence this.The paper also examines some applications where these types of coated media could be particularly pertinent.