Fall 2005 Photo Printer Buyers Guide 189
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.'"
Re:Why pay for your own? (Score:5, Interesting)
Longetivity? (Score:4, Interesting)
Article downplays superiority of dysub over inkjet (Score:4, Interesting)
But I would never use inkjet, well anywhere. On photos because it would always smear and generally give out crappy results (you can see the intermittent lines). Plus it looks god-awful on regular paper and that ink cartridge dries out if you don't tend to regularly use it every few weeks.
Except for the cheap paper bit, dye-sub doesn't have these problems and even a lower resolution looks better because it' more blended in. My dye-sub puts on a clear coat too so it has that professional look from the photo lab, not the cheapo inkjet look. And I can only print on photo paper with my dye-sub so the quality is kinda always forced on me:) but I don't mind. The cartridges aren't with ink so it can't dry out (the color layers are on a plastic and heat transferred to the paper).
I use a Hiti printer (Hi-touch Imaging) which only focuses on these printers but they are good. I don't know if it supports linux but it's stand-alone anyway. Plus I find the price of consumables reasonable - fifty 4x6s and a dyesub cartridge bundled together for under 20 bucks.
But whatever company somebody goes with, avoid inkjet! Plus my photos have a life of 99 years - I don't think the same can be said for inkjet (imagine that stored in someplace moderately humid).
Re:DPI is (almost) meaningless (Score:3, Interesting)
Another tip a printer designer told me :) don't think of DPI, think of PPPI, or Pixels Per Printed Inch. Try sending a photo to the printer at higher and higher resolution. At what point do you stop seeing a quality improvement?
For the large format inkjets I used to work with (rated at 600 x 1200 DPI), image quality maxed out at about 150 pppi (because of the size of the dither cell, as you said). You can actually start to see a drop in quality beyond this since the printer is downsizing your image and you'll start to get moire effects. Plus of course your print is taking longer because you're shipping more data to it.
A desktop photo printer will have a much smaller dropsize, so the quality will peak at a higher pppi than that.
Re: DPI IS Meaningless (Score:4, Interesting)
What they also fail to mention is the paper requirements in order to produce a photo-quality image. It's got to hold a heck of a lot of ink, so there's very few papers capable of holding/controlling that much ink.
A better predictor of "photo quality" is the number of inks.
The other thing to watch out on is what the borderless performance really is. I work with a Canon that won't do borderless on plain paper, so if I have a document with tiny margins, it generally screws it up.
At this point, I don't see a reason why it's really necessary when most photo processors do it arguably better, but on real photo paper that is much less resistant to fading.
What for? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure sounds ghastly coming from a computer freak like me, but, heck, chaps: I got myself an age-old Hp Laserprinter, complete with lots of RAM and PostScripting, 600 dpi, flat paper storage, for about $200. Works like a charm, hooks up simply to my parallel port (but can hook into my network).
It's all I ever need for printing.
I print lots of photos. Either over the net, or by simply walking to a small Photo-Shop. They will print me any digital image at any size, in excellent quality, on paper, cups, shirts... and quite a bit cheaper (and better!) than I could manage with my own printer.
Why would I want a color printer?
Re:DPI is (almost) meaningless (Score:2, Interesting)
First, let's look at the pixels... A standard consumer P/S and low end professional DSLR camera would take images at around 6MP (Nikon D70), a high end professional would be closer to 12MP (Nikon D2X)
The 12MP D2X can take images at 4288 x 2848. Scaled landscape on an 8x10 (what most people end up printing at home, either 8x10 or 81/2x11) we get a resolution of (4288/10) x (2848/8) or 428.8 x 365 in true pixels per inch.
For the D70, it's native resolution is 3008 x 2000. Scaled landscape on an 8x10 we get (3008/10) x (2000/8) or 300.8 x 250 pixels per inch.
Of course if we, say, print a 5x3 which would give us 601.6 x 666 2/3 pixels from the 6MP D70. If we enlarge to say 13x19 we'd get about 153.8 x 158.3
Now the problem here is that Pixels per inch does NOT directly translate into Dots per inch. See http://imaging-resource.com/TIPS/PRINT1/PRINT1A.H
PPI can be a factor of DPI but DPI by itself is meaningless. Printer manufacturers advertise DPI because they want the big numbers to impress uninformed consumers. With most of the high end, high resolution photo printers will give you comparable output in terms of resolution quality so you can't really go wrong there. What you really want to do is look at real photo printout samples if you can, not just for resolution but for things like color quality at different angles, the shine of the gloss for glossy inks, how much it smears/water solubility, etc. Those that plan to do any black and white need to be sure to look at black and white output, particulatly on the papers they plan to use. A printer that can do amazing color might do a poor job of B/W and something that can do great output on glossy paper might not do as good a job on matte paper.
My personal recommendation is to either go with the Epson R800 for up to the standard 8 1/2" wide prints, or the R1800 if you want to do larger prints (up to 13" wide). I have the R1800 and have used an R800 as well. The two printers are virtually identical other than a few things such as the position of the buttons and the maximum paper size. They use the archival quality UltraChome Pigments which are resistant to water, smearing, and are supposed to be fade resistant for 100-200 years depending on paper and environment. They can print on CDs and roll paper. The output looks great.
The second most important question (Score:3, Interesting)
Worst explanation ever (Score:3, Interesting)
The above makes no sense to me.
The smaller the drop size, the more ink can be placed on the paper? So I can make a floor wetter with a small bucket than with a big one?
And the more ink, the better the print? So presumably I could make any given print better by re-running the same paper through twice?
While apparently intended to be illuminating, I find the article's statements above (assuming they're true) to be like explaining digestion by saying "the act of chewing food causes the absorption of nutrients into the bloodstream"... true, but too many steps left out for comprehension. No explanation would have been better than their non-sensical one. They should have either given a better explanation, or just left it at "the smaller the number, the better the print."