Gloss is a property of paper that is used to emphasize print quality and color appearance. However, standard gloss measuring devices are not able to provide sufficiently accurate information to reliably develop papers with specific gloss characteristics. In this paper, the behavior of gloss is studied using goniometric imaging and spectral color information. A goniometric imaging system is proposed to capture reflection images that reveal the spatial variation of the gloss over paper samples. The characteristics of the gloss are discussed by comparing the results of goniometric imaging, standard gloss measurements and spectroradiometric measurements.