This depends on your eye-sight a bit. If you're short sighted and/or
have good abilities with close focusing, it's quite easy just to see
the difference - one side is the raw fibres, the other side is slightly
smoother, the coating being over the top of the fibres. However, this
doesn't work for everyone, so here are some other ways to work it out:
The
first is the curl - generally, coated papers will curl slightly upwards
toward the coated side.
If you still can't tell, there is the
'tacky test'. With a moist finger, touch both sides of the paper - the
coated side should be noticeably stickier.
The
final way of telling is to do a print! Use the same image, print it on
both side of the paper - you'll soon know which is the correct side
(the one without the ink bleed!) and you can use this as a reference
for the rest of the box!