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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."
I went to the URL http://www.pcpro.co.uk/ then clicked on http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/66959, and I see NOTHING comparing the printers, only a message to get the latest edition of PCPro.
What is this? Some kind of marketing scam by Slashdot and PCPro, a way to "entice" people to purchase the magazine or something to get the real article?
This almost makes me wonder... why does Slashdot allow links to registration-only sites, sites where the content needs to be purchased, etc. when most times, a free version of the article is available elsewhere? What is going on lately?!
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This article looks like a slashvertisment for PC Pro Magazine. I see nothing of substance -- you have to buy the magazine to see any of the results.
The test gives a great boost to the idea of buying very expensive ink cartridges from the manufacturers.
While it's certainly nice to hang photos or show around printed/developed photos, I feel less need to do so.
If you want to show a slide show, now you can just connect a laptop to a TV set (or use the laptop's display, if there are not too many people).
I mean, we are the digital generation, aren't we?
E.g., my parents print out ever single email they receive because they want to file and keep it. For the same reason, I leave my emails on my computer. My CD collection is digitized for easy searching and minxing in iTunes.
Soon, there might be cheap LCD-screens hanging everywhere in your house, displaying pictures or whatever. You press one button, the decoration changes.
Until then, printing is okay, I guess... but in maybe five years...
I don't need a signature.
There's a better article on the results at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4092653.stm
Disclaimer: I work for a company, but I don't speak for them.
I know some keen amateur photographers who have actually given up on home printing. When you take into account the ink and paper cost, it is often cheaper to get prints made in the high street, or using online services (where you upload a file and they send you the prints).
The quality of real prints on proper paper (eg. Fuji Crystal Archive) is hard to beat at home. Colour management is another nightmare that can waste time and paper.
Of course, you can use third party ink and paper in your top of the range printer to reduce costs, but then the archival qualities are unknown - only the combination of ink and paper certified by the manufacturer is guaranteed to be archival.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
Of course some of the high street chains will print from digital (though when I went once to try and get a quick print, the list of instructions on the kiosk looked like the toilet instructions in 2001, so I just went home and printed), but they talk about `developers'.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
It says that you can make better and cheaper photos at home, if you choose the right combination of printer, ink, and paper. Now I was wondering if the "right combonation" is just a one time set up, or would you have to change your setup depending on what kind of photography you happen to be doing. Should indoor, low-light prints be made with different paper or even a different cartridge, and bright outdoor prints with yet another? Also, how many prints would you have to need developed say, every month, in order for the lower cost per print to cancel out to investment in a printer and the inevitable replacement of ink cartriges?
The article sais, pictures were printed on various printers. After 12 months
they were examined, and some were found OK while others faded away excessively.
All this was done at normal daylight/temperature - no accelerated tests were
made.
I cant see how this can be compared to professionally printed photographs or
wedding photos. They surely wont fade within 12 months of normal in-house
daylight.
An inkjet picture that doesnt fade noticably within 12 months is remarkable,
but not necessarily "better than professionally made photographs".
I, for one welcome our high-rez photo printing overlords...
Uh, wait...
Here is why:
1. Paper, Printer, Ink Costs
2. Hassle of finding the right brand/model/style/type(glossy, photo etc)
3.Printer Troubles
4.Cropping photos
5.Time
I use Wal-Mart for my digital prints, and they usually do a really good job, while Costco has been a nightmare for me(horrible quality, bad paper etc). You should find a good place to print in your area, and stick with it.
my $.02
University of Washington
Student
...is much easier to hide on a computer, compared to hard copy. Do you have any idea how much space 100k+ pics would take up, on paper? And the printing costs. Oh my!
I drank what? -- Socrates
Plus all printers seem designed to screw up two out of every three pieces of photo paper, so each successful print costs about £5. Why is this stuff so expensive anyway?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
An Epson 2200 or Canon S9000 is going to set you back about $500. Good inks for the Epson (the Ultrachrome inks) cost another $90.00 (for all colors), and good paper (archive quality) goes for about $0.50 / sheet. With Epson, I get longevity at the cost of image "punch". With Canon, I get faster, quieter prints and stronger colors, but they fade faster. If I go with a cheaper Epson (say, the 2000), I have to deal with terrible metamerism, a cheaper Canon I get terrible B&W. Each print is going to cost about $1.50 a page at best. This doens't factor in the cost of the printer itself.
Or, I can custom profile my photos for specific machine output (using Dry Creek's wonderful database), take my photos to CostCo/Sam's Club/Walgreens, where they print on Fuji Frontier's, pay $0.18 for a 4x6, get better color and more longevity.
Pretty simple decision to me.
The article points out that for serious colour printing, cheap ink is a mistake (and it also lets you know which OEMs are supplying inferior ink.)
I don't have a problem with PcPro looking to recover the cost of some expensive research, and I don't have a problem with paying for OEM ink if it means my great-great-grandchildren will know what their ancestors looked like.
BTW, our lab is currently testing the Kyocera C5016 colour laser printer. If you want A4/letter in reasonable volume, with really rather good color and very cheap consumables, this is the one to go for. Printing black should be as cheap as on an ordinary mono laser, color is a fraction the cost of the HP equivalents. And I'm not even being paid to say this...
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
If you want to know more about print permanence, have a look at this site :
http://www.wilhelm-research.com/
They did very strict studies on many printers and papers.
You should not, under any circumstances, read this sig.
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.
"I printed a test pattern on a piece of plain paper, and taped it to the outside of my south-facing window, so it would be subject to the full measure of California sun and the elements. A month later, the test pattern is still there. In particular, the cyan+magenta+yellow patches show no sign of color shift. Believe me, neither commercial offset printing nor ordinary color prints wouldn hold up nearly so well under these conditions. In fact, the paper is starting to show some signs of degrading, including a slight yellowing and a more brittle-feeling texture."
"So, it's not exactly a scientific test, but I think you can make prints on the 2200 with confidence that your grandchildren will still be able to enjoy them. Highly recommended."
Using both traditional "wet" darkroom and the "digital" darkroom actively myself, a couple points are missing;
1) The main reason many digital prints (pro or home use) loook "better" is because of the premium "traditional" printing processes have been stopped by many of ht elarge photographic supply companies. It is not there there was not a demand for these products, but rather, more demand for digital products.
This in itself is not such a bad thing, but if any of you ever get to see, close up, in person, a properly made print using dye transfer technique or th eold Cibachrome printing process, you will see justg what can be done, and what is missing. The bototm line is that, it takes - like all other typesof art and craftsmanship - usually and extra 200% effort to improve someby only 10 or 20%. Also, since many of the premium photographic products have been discontinued in the past few years, it is very easy to make this whole issue a self full filling prophecy.
2) It would take somebody years of experience to learn the art of print making - any technique, and now, a 12 year old can produce a technically good print in seconds. This is not the bad part, the bad part is that I find it very ahrd to teach people nowadays - both young and old - some of the finer parts of the craft of printmaking - such as composition. The rules of composition go back hundreds of years, thousands even in the world of art, regardless of you medium. too many people now seem to think that because they can use a computer to produce technically correct prints, that the other "rules' are no longer needed now too.
3) if you go study graphic arts, photogrpahy, etc, of any kind for 3 or 4 years at college, you might as well give up trying ot find a decent job in your feild, or so it seems anymore. Because any and every 12 year old kid with a PC can produce technically excellent prints at home, the general level fo respect for work form any graphic art studio or photographer is not what it once was years ago. The end result, i have seen, is that many businesses can no longer afford to pay good people to do thier technical work. No offence, but there's a line form "Babylon 5" about hiring from the shallow end of the gene pool. If you are paying somebody near minim wage to run yoru machines, do your tehcnical work, well, you get what you pay for. However, it's a catch-22 situation - these places cannot often afford ot hire somebody worth the moeny because the public will not pay for it.
4) It's not always personell, sometimes it is machinery & supplies. For example, if you are a private photo-lab, and you sign a contract to do the work for a large chain store to develop 35mm filma nd do the prints, well everybody wants it doen in one hour, and done as cheaply as possible. The end result I see, is in order to keep up this leve of expectation, you run cheaper paper in your machine,a nd more importantly, you run your chemistry to past exhaustion. For exmaple, when developing film, colour or B&W, you can only do so many films (any format) per litre or gallon of developer before you have to replace or replenish it. The most common way to cut corners and save time and money is go past that point. Once you start to do that, your negatives never come out right, and afterwards, regardles of hwat print making process you are using, if you negative is poorly developed, you'll have a terrible time ever trying to make a good print out of it.
One last thought - this never comes up, but it should be made known, and it explains, IMO, exactly why Kodak, Agfa, and other are all rushing like mad to "do away" with traditional "wet" darkroom supplies.
If you go out and price the cost of any premium B&W photogrpahic paper - the very best you can find - the stuff made with real silver in it - you will find that many of the premium photo quality papers for PC printer use (either inkjet or laser) are actually more expensive.
Also, I ahve three enlargers in my darkroom, the newest is
* Introduction
This is a summary of what I have learned over the past year and a half. I'm not a professional and this isn't technical information. It's just practical information that may help some inkjet printing newbies out there. I learned what I know from visiting forums and first hand experience. I also conducted my own (very unscientific) 12 month test.
Hopefully, it will be more helpful than the PC Pro article. (that most of us couldn't see)
* The beginning.
I purchased a Canon i560 over a year ago as a general purpose printer. It was cheap. It had a modest TCO. It printed incredibly sharp text. And, BTW, it printed photos. As it turned out, I was stunned by the quality of the photos it produced and was thrown head first into an obsessive journey through forums, web searches, and experiments to find out how good things really could be.
From what I found on the Web, Canon prints, while beautiful, have a significantly shorter lifespan than HP or Epson dye prints. (note: the lifespan is typically defined as visible fading and discoloration, not disintegration ) Canon predicts about 25 years while HP and Epson predict closer to the 50-75 year mark. Epson pigment ink, when used with specific papers, has a predicted lifespan of over 100 years. Fuji Crystal Archive prints have a predicted lifespan of 65 years. Adding to the confusion, I found other sites with markedly different results using different test methods. I also found people claiming Canon prints would not last a year. Obviously, the truth lies somewhere in between but I was curious to find out if Canon prints really were as bad as some people claimed.
* 12 months of sun and heat.
My experiment consisted of placing a set of prints in an envelope in a cool dark place while an identical set was placed a few feet below a sunny roof window in a loft where the temperature regularly exceeds 100 degrees farenheit during the summer (not a place you would want to put any photos). I knew this would be a harsh test but I was curious to see how the Canon prints would hold up compared to Fuji Crystal Archive and Kodak dye-sub prints. I also reprinted the photos after 12 months to have fresh prints for comparison.
After 12 months of heat, humidity and direct sunlight I found that the Canon prints exposed to sunlight did fade noticeably but not as badly as I would have expected. Most consumers would probably have a hard time noticing anything wrong with the prints until they were compared side-by-side to the originals. The Canon prints stored away from the sun looked identical to the new prints.
The Fuji Crystal Archive prints (printed on a Fuji Frontier) that were exposed to the sun did not show any noticeable fading and were indescernable from the prints stored away from the sun and the new prints.
The Kodak dye-sub prints (printed on a mini-fridge-sized printer at a large pharmacy chain) that were exposed to sunlight faded as much as the Canon prints. The Kodak prints stored away from the sun were indescernable from the new prints.
Having said that, I should mention that I have a number of 8x10s that were printed on a small, desktop Kodak dye-sub printer about eight years ago. They are all framed behind cheap glass and hung in open areas. They are not exposed to extreme conditions and have not shown any noticeable deterioration.
The take home points for me?
1. If the print is going to end up on a refrigerator or on a bulletin board then there is nothing to worry about. It's basically a disposable photo and all the printer manufacturers are suited for this.
2. If you want your photos to last but don't want the fuss of selecting and maintaining a more expensive printer then have them printed on a Fuji Frontier printer at a commercial location.
3. Consider the Epson printers that use pigment-based inks if you want to resell or archive your photos.
4. A
I'm a hobbie digital photobug. I print about 200 pics per month. I have a Canon i960 - Still the best vs the PIXMA line(on sale @ tigerDirect for $98)...28 sec for an lab quality 4x6. 6 color, 2 pico-liter droplet technology. The new PIXMAs are mostly 4 color and slower. The PIXMA 5000 is 1 pico-liter tehcnology and 9600 dpi. That is one too see...Anyway, tried many third party ink refills(did not color match) and found that alotofthings.com had the BEST quality inks and great price. Plain old Epson glossy paper turns out to be the best per $$$ paper on the planet. For objective photo printer reviews, check out steves-digicams.com
From what I read on the net, Epson uses pigments and Canon uses dyes. Molecularly, dyes are smaller and therefor Canon can get the 1-2 pico-liter droplet and fine resolution. Epson can not get as fine but pigments tend to have the BEST archival properties.