Slashdot Mirror
PC Photo Printers Challenge Pros
zebadee writes "A survey carried out by PC Pro magazine looked at which of 100 home photo printers offered a better deal than handing your snaps to a photo lab.
The tests found that images from top PC printers kept their colour longer than professionally produced photographs.
In the report at the BBC it claims that the new generation of printers produced images with brighter colours and that were less likely to fade than many High Street developers or even some professional wedding photographers."
The test gives a great boost to the idea of buying very expensive ink cartridges from the manufacturers.
Oh yeah, print is dead. Just look what happened to the 'paperless office' idea.
Generally, people like having something physical to deal with.
Plus, once a picture is printed out it requires no maintenance. I'm buggered if I'm going to dedicate a PC to showing a photo on my wall.
"You heard the man, Tubbs.. get undressed."
Speaking as someone who spent four years working with digital photo printers, you will always get better results from a store (Ritz, Proex, Wal-mart etc) than you will ever get with a home printer. Reason? They buy a $750,000 digital printer, you buy a $200 printer. More accurately, save for some of the higher end dye-sublimation stuff, you are typically spraying ink onto a piece of paper which inevitably fades over time as it oxidizes. They have gotten better, but you're usually looking at about a 20 shelf life for the average home printed print. Fuji guarantees it's crystal archive prints not to fade for 100 years (Although, in all fairness let's see you try to get a reprint on a faded image in 50 years!) and Kodak guarantees its paper for 75. Maybe it won't make a difference, but you'd be surprised how much a 20 year old non-faded picture can mean to someone. The modern mini-lab digital printers are using good old fashioned (Well, old in the relative sense.) light sensitive color emulsion photo paper, exposed to a laser and then sealed in photo chemicals to produce their results. Lasting far longer than a simple dye could. Yeah, I know, I sound like an ad for a photo mini-lab, but I'm really sick of enlarging prints from a crappy faded inkjet printer, and people wondering why it looks so horrible. Oh yeah, and one other note, when you take your pictures in, make sure they're getting printed on the giant mini-lab in the back of the store, and not some POS dorm fridge sized printer on the counter. Because I know for a fact that certain stores *coughritzcough* lie about how long the photos coming off a Fuji PrintPix printer will last.