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.'"

And ...

[Alranor]

The most important specification for /. readers:

Is it supported on Linux? :)

You can check at linuxprinting.org [linuxprinting.org]

What to look for: No HP!

[mcgroarty]

The HP printers have three things going for them: First, they're cheap. Second, the printhead is on the cartridge, so a clog means a lost cartridge, not a lost printer or making a flush kit to force Windex through your print head. Third, the HP printers still look great in draft/high-speed mode. Some inkjets look like old color dot matrix printers in high-speed mode.

The big downside is drivers. UGH, HP drivers! They crash at random, require you to be an administrator to run the scanning software, add 20-30 seconds to your login time, and do weird things when other HP software is installed. (For example, installing my HP DVD burner software caused my HP printer driver's launcher to launch an explorer window pointing to the directory with the printer software install every single login. This, on a fresh install with nothing but the HP DVD software installed after XP.)

On the Mac side, people with Tiger and HP printer-scanner-copiers are -still- waiting for a promised update to enable HP-supported scanning, or are giving up and using ports of open source scanning software.

The HP PSCs are comparatively painless with Linux and *BSD, but check out some of the other options if you'll be using Windows or Mac OS on the same machine.

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?

Tin-foil hat brigade criteria

[merc]

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. ... and the better the secretly embedded printer's serial number may be hidden on your document.

*blinks*

This is why.

[OS24Ever]

I need 2 4x6's. Sure, they're $0.14 online, but add $4.95 in shipping and off you go.

I use Mpix.com for all my large printing needs. They are actually exposing the digital exposure to Kodak film paper which can be common among some people. Their price and service can't be beat either. 8x10s for $2.

However if I need a 4x6, or a 8x10, a home printer is a decent deal. I recently picked up the Kodak 1400 [kodak.com] dye sub printer for just this reason. There was a $100 rebate so it's a $343 printer, and the paper size of 8x14 lets me print 4 4x6s, 2 5x7s, 2 6x8s, or one 8x10 or 8x12 per page. I won't be printing out a 'major event' like my son's 2nd birthday portrait or the disaster that was the attempt at my [fotki.com]daughters 4th birthday portrait [fotki.com] because I usually want a ton of wallets, a good amount of 4x6s, and 5x7s and 8x10s for the grandparents, my desk, what not.

But for quick and easy home prints, a decent (but not outrageous) printer works for me. I've got a bad taste in my mouth for inkjet because the Canon S9000 I got when I got my first digital SLR in 2002 fades pretty badly unless you frame it. It doesn't stand up to my 'fridge test' where you print it, take a magnet, and pin it to the fridge for all eternity.

Fotki.com and the Kodak Easyshare Gallery have so far withstood that test rather well. However Kodak keeps making me sign a release form for every order for copyright reasons. Mpix does not, because there is no copyright displayed on my images. Apple has the same issue in iPhoto, but Kodak is their print engine. Fotki has been on the fridge for over a year now with no fading, next to a S9000 4x6 that is about as faded as it gets.

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!

[mcgroarty]

I've had Epsons in the past, none at current. Do they have a removable print mechanism yet? I was really happy with the output and the price, but the frequent clogs were horrible. Any time I didn't print for a few weeks, I had to flush it out to avoid stuck nozzles.

I was no fan of their drivers, but thankfully either they or MS offered a version of the drivers wtihout the "helper" (ink salesman) apps.

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 [cymbolic.com] (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 [ilford.com] 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.

Re: Linux

[mebollocks]

Hey it's not just Japan! http://www.epsondevelopers.com/linux [epsondevelopers.com]

Re:This is why.

[Evro]

I need 2 4x6's. Sure, they're $0.14 online, but add $4.95 in shipping and off you go.

With Wal-Mart, Target, and CVS, you can upload the pics and then go pick them up in-store and not pay shipping. Or you can just go there with your memory card or CD and use the kiosk. Sure, it's like 29 cents/print instead of 14 cents, but for 2 pics the price difference isn't that much.

Re:So

[mysticgoat]

I stopped reading at this point.

That's too bad, but I appreciate your honesty. It helps in assessing how much weight should be given to your comments. :-)

Printers that use small drops have more nozzles, and with more nozzles, they can use more sophisticated dithering patterns for color gradations. I use a Canon 9900, which has a nominal resolution 4800x2400 dpi, but each of those "dots" can be built up from overlayments of 8 different inks in a large number of different combinations. Printers with 9600 dpi can achieve the same quality with 6 different inks and fancier dithering patterns (more nozzles and a more expensive print head).

While TFA talks about the smaller drops providing more resolution, I don't think anyone should put too much weight on that aspect. All of these higher end printers are working with the way the paper will bleed neighboring "dots" into each other, and doing so at higher resolutions than the human eye can resolve. The end product is a watercolor painting. With some papers and ink weights, the end result is truly an analog product as the neighboring "dots" completely blend into each other before the ink dries.

Re:And ...

[zakezuke]

no, the most important specification for /. readers: Does it run linux? if not, Can it run linux?

Most linux users know about turboprint, some already posted a link to the epson drivers... here is the link to the offical canon linux drivers

ftp://download.canon.jp/pub/driver/bj/linux/ [canon.jp]

CD printing on Canons

[zakezuke]

There are those of us who bought into Epsons to do CD printing... and well... their sub $300 printers are rather high maintance creatures. My experence with the r200 was not pleasent at all, and they only have one AIO printer that prints on CDs... and it's not cheap.

http://pixma.webpal.info/ [webpal.info]

Fortunatly most of the Canon Pixmas can print on CDs as well, just the feature is disabled for the North American market and it's not shipped with a CD tray. You can e-bay a tray... canon wasn't hip to places like partsnow selling them so you are dependent on people importing them independently. You can make your own or hack one from an old epson tray.

While I prefer the Epsons for flat out photo quality, colors that look good out of the box on most media without tweeking, and the ink's tendancy to wick less.... their low end printers clog if you look at them funny, they don't have anything resembling a frame, and diaper replacement can not be done without breaking plastic nor can you reassemble it without a jig. Not that there are not ways to extend the life of epsons... just my experence was I spent more time mucking with the printer than printing, and I prefer buying hardware either outlasts the warranty or at the very least can be maintained.

Re:What's the Point of Digital Photography?

[NardofDoom]

Then why print them out? Maybe it's the technophile in me, but I abhor taking something that's perfectly good in its digital form, has all the advantages of existing digitally, and then using perfectly good trees because you need something "real." If digital stuff isn't real, what do I spend all day doing? Making things that don't exist?

I can't justify having a printer just for digital photos, especially considering
1) I can order prints online, either within iPhoto or from another service
2) I have a gallery [menalto.com] that I can host images on and share with friends and family
3) I can go print out a photo at any number of locations using their printer, if I really, desperately need a representative of my image in petrochemicals on dead trees
4) Ink cartridges for the damn things are more expensive than the printer itself, are dried out before I use them, and don't preserve well (though this is improving) 5) They only print photos 6) Storing photos on a hard drive takes up as much space as, well, a hard drive. Try keeping 10,000 dead-tree photos (as many as I have in my iPhoto library right now) indexed and searchable, not to mention preserved.