Fall 2005 Photo Printer Buyers Guide

lfescalante writes "DesignTechnica has some great tips on what to look for when buying a Photo Printer. From the article: 'Some of the best printers offer 9600 x 2400 DPI and over 50 levels of gradation. Another important specification for inkjet printers is ink drop size, typically measured in picoliters. The smaller the number, the more ink per square inch can be placed on the paper. The more ink, the more accurate and lifelike the color of the print.'"

Comments

And ...

[Alranor]

The most important specification for /. readers:

Is it supported on Linux? :)

You can check at linuxprinting.org

So

[Anonymous Coward]

No real news to post then?

Seriously, I would hope most Slashdot readers are capable of finding a good photo printer on their own. Those that need a little help can probably find a better source of information than this dry, four page advert.

Re:So

[mustafap]

Personally, I think the best source of photo printing is at a photo lab. If a photo is worth printing out, do it properly, so it gets printed with inks that wont fade with time. And certainly in my case, it's still cheaper. Home photo printers are a costly gimick.

Re:So

[iangoldby]

When you're out shopping, the higher the resolution, the smaller the dots...

No, higher resolution does not necessarily mean smaller drops. Smaller drop size means smaller drops.

The best way to gauge any printer's photo capabilities is looking at sample prints at the store

Except that these are often highly tweaked images and are sometimes even printed from a demo application that doesn't even use the usual printer driver.

or on printer company websites.

Huh? Am I supposed to judge from an image on the website, or should I download a sample and print it out? (It reminds me of a TV ad trying to demonstrate how much better the colours are on their TV...)

Another important specification for inkjet printers is ink drop size, typically measured in picoliters. The smaller the number, the more ink per square inch can be placed on the paper.

No, the smaller the drop size, the more dots are needed to lay down an equivalent amount of ink.

I stopped reading at this point.

Re:So

[caveat]

Just for the record, a lab print isn't ink-based, at least at the shop I go to - they use one of these suckers (maybe not that exact brand/model, but you get the point) to "paint" the image onto genuine light-sensitive color photo paper that's processed the old-fashioned way with chemicals. $1.99 for an 8x10, $2.99 for an 11x14. They look a hell of a lot better than any photo print I've ever seen, including dyesubs, and they last and last. When I do a print for my small photography side business, I do it this way...the client is almost always amazed with the result, and asks me what kind of printer I use, they just have to get one for themselves. I tell them "trade secret" :)

If you just have to use your printer, I'd suggest Ilford GALERIE Classic paper; it has an encapsulation system that soaks up the ink and mostly protects it from fading, It's pricey (enough so that there's NO economic advantage over a lab print) and takes a full day to dry out, but it is as close to perfect as you're gonna get from an inkjet. When I do prints for my own consumption, I ususally go this route for the convenience.

Why pay for your own?

[LarsWestergren]

Ok, having your own photo printer is conventient, and as geeks we love our tech toys of course, but remember that these days you can have your digital images printed professionally at photo labs VERY cheap.

The prints will last longer, and cost per page is probably going to be the same or even lower, as the printer manufacturers keep jacking up the price for new ink cartriges and use ever more draconian tech and/or EULA measures to prevent cheap no-name replacements/refills.

Re:Why pay for your own?

[RandoX]

Because some places refuse to print your work if it looks too good.

Why?

[squoozer]

Unless you are into printing up your home made porn why would you print photographs at home? I always used to think it was a good idea price wise (even when I worked for a online photo printing outfit) as print shops didn't really cater for digital images and prices were stupid. The real print shops quickly got their act together and made home printing totally uneconomical. I admit there is a break even point where very large prints are cheaper to do yourself but only if you don't take into account the thousands spent on buying a large format printer. These printer manufacturer must be laughing all the way to the bank.

DPI is (almost) meaningless

[jcupitt65]

A good tip I heard from a printer designer was to ignore the DPI figure, as long as it's more than about 600. It (usually) means how precisely the printer can place dots. It does not say much about the detail or grain you'll see in the print. For that, you need to know the dot size. Of course there's a trade off: smaller dots means (other factors being equal) longer print times, since you have to squirt more dots to get the same level of ink density.

Higher end printers have several shades of grey ink as well as black. This can add a lot of the apparent smoothness of prints, especially if you are going to be printing any black and white photos.

Metamerism is also very important. Print a black and white photo and look at it under tungsten and in daylight. It should stay looking black and white! You'll find some will look red in tungsten and greenish in daylight.

Finally, look at color management. Does the driver let you use your own profiles, or is it more of a point and shoot thing?

Re:DPI is (almost) meaningless

[Shanep]

A good tip I heard from a printer designer was to ignore the DPI figure, as long as it's more than about 600. It (usually) means how precisely the printer can place dots.

There is another issue, with so called photo printers. I don't know if this still holds true, so it would be good if someone could confirm this.

With older technology printers, dots per inch is actually meaningful. It literally accounted for the number of non overlapping dots, each of which could be considered a pixel. However with these new bubble jet and ink jet type printers, they need to spit many very small ink dots into the area which makes up a printed pixel, so as to build up a single pixel of varying colour through the use of dithering.

Fair enough right? Whatever needs to be done to make those images look great?

Well unfortunately, these photo printer makers are using deceptive marketing. Because a "dot" in their definition of dpi DOES NOT equate in a meaningful manner to a pixel, instead their "dot" refers to each of the smaller dither dots.

This is why for a long time, ink and bubble jets of 600dpi looked like crap against a 300dpi laser print out, where edge smoothness and text mattered.

9600dpi, 2400dpi, whatever. Don't bother telling me because it is now a meaningless figure. You could make a printer with a real dpi of 150, but made up of 9600dpi dither dots and it is still going to look like a 150dpi print out. But the brochure says 9600dpi, not 150dpi. This is an exageration btw, to make the point. The best thing to do is look at actual print outs and decide on quality with your own eyes, because manufacturer quoted numbers in this regard are pretty much useless when the most important metric is undisclosed and remains so because it would hurt sales.

Re:What to look for: No HP!

[Overzeetop]

You obviously have never expeienced the hell that is the Epson Status Monitor which must run in order to use a consumer epson photo printer. If anything should go wrong, the system will hang (print system, not the OS). And if you've ever had to reinstall a driver due to a bug...oh, you're in for some fun. You see, the uninstall doesn't actually uninstall everything, and a full removal requires both manual tracking down of all the epson driver bits (search for E_ in the entire system directory), and editing the registry.

In addition it makes them almost impossible to use with a network print server. Any fault - paper out, ink low, etc - causes the job to hang, and fixing the problem results in the first burst of data getting printed, while the print server stays locked up tight as a drum. To get the system working again generally requires either a reboot or manually killing the entire print spooler service and manually restarting it. Even worse, if you clear the error and do not power down the printserver and the printer, the first burst of information will make it through to the printer, and then the printer will hang. No big deal? Well, since the first few lines of ink get put down, it effectively ruins whatever media you're using. For something on bond it's merely annoying. For an 8x10 glossy print or a printable CD or DVD, you've just thrown away $.25 to $2.00 (or more for a DL DVD) in media. Of course, as a bonus, your required power cycle results in wasting a slug of $$$ ink to the startup cycle.

Sadly, I stick with Epson because the output is just so damned good, and I really like the CD/DVD printing feature. Sort of like having a beautiful but high maintenance girlfriend who's a tiger in the sack - you learn to walk on eggshells, but with every great performance you convice yourself it's worth it.

Re: great performances.

[CodeShark]

Sort of like having a beautiful but high maintenance girlfriend who's a tiger in the sack - you learn to walk on eggshells, but with every great performance you convice yourself it's worth it.

Um, no, been there done that.

Fact is that with systems, printers, AND girlfriends, it is much better to keep shopping for low-maintenance, great performance.

Oh, and by the way, of the three the third one requires more attention and TLC than the other two and deserves it as well. So get up from /. occasionally and take care of the lady as well...