School of Photography Newsletters

What is the definition of confusion? Shopping for a printer. They come in all shapes, sizes and formats and trying to choose the right one can be mind boggling. However here we will come to the rescue, at least be of some help to hopefully point you in the right direction.

Printers can be loosely divided into a few categories.

Firstly there is the enprint sized photo printer. These print photos of a similar size (approximately 6″x4″) to what you would get from your photo processor when developing film. They often can be acquired bundled with a camera and nearly all can be used without a computer. The camera or memory card can be plugged straight into them and out pops your printed photo with a minimum of fuss.

The advantage of these printers is they are simple to use and you can get your images printed in an instant. The disadvantages though are; they can only be used for printing small prints and the ink and paper is expensive. In fact more expensive then having your digital images printed by your local processor who has digital printing facilities.

Then there is the standard computer inkjet printer which has evolved drastically over the recent past. Most inkjet printers boast photo quality printing with various degrees of quality depending on the ink, paper and settings used. A good quality inkjet printer will print up to A4 size and borderless. Some are now even capable of printing directly from a memory card without the need of using a computer. Some will even have an editing screen built into the printer for previewing and sorting through the images on the memory card.

There are a few advantages to an inkjet printer. One is the printer can be used for general purposes, not just photographic images. Another is you can vary the size of your prints. And thirdly, though printing using these types of printers is still expensive, there is more scope for shopping around for the best deals on paper and inks.

Finally there is the combination printer/scanner/copier. These all round machines are very versatile and can achieve some good results. However some sacrifices are bound to be made in comparison to the dedicated printer in order to facilitate the other options in the machines. 

There is a lot of technical aspects regarding printers, as is the case with all digital appliances. However when comparing printers look at these few capabilities:

1. Resolution - The higher the resolution capabilities the better. Sharpness and colour saturation is better with high resolution printers, even if you don’t print your images at the highest available resolution on the printer.

2. Inks - In theory, the more colour inks that are used, the better the colour quality that can be produced. Printers usually have between four and six colours, including black. Some may have all the colours included in one cartridge while others will have each colour in individual cartridges. Which is better really is splitting hairs but economically in the long run, fewer colours in separate cartridges probably works out cheaper.

3. Speed - Not the most important aspect where printing photos is concerned. Some printers are faster at printing than others and the makers tend to put a lot of stock in this. However for most general purposes, speed is the least concern as long as the finished product is of good quality. Speed is more important when printing documents, in particular when large quantities is concerned.

Want to know more about digital printing?  Learn all about it in our Digital Photography Course. See full details at http://www.schoolofphotography.com/digital_photography_course.html