Let's face it, with so many different photo printers available out there, each with different functionalities and capabilities, choosing the right one for your specific needs may be quite tricky.
Whether you're a beginner, or even an amateur photographer, and you need to purchase a good quality photo printer to immortalise your photographs, walking into a shop and trying to figure out which printer best suits your needs can be quite complicated if you don't know what you're looking for.
All too often, people buy a printer that doesn't deliver on their expectations or offers way too much in the way of functionality and turns out to be a waste of money.
It therefore pays to do your homework before you decide to purchase a printer. Below is a guide on how to choose the best photo printer for your needs:
(1) LaserJet or inkjet?
While LaserJet printers are capable of printing very high quality graphics and documents, they are not designed to print photographs.
The toner (ie, powdered ink) that laser printers utilise cannot deliver the levels of quality and crispness that inkjet printers can with their ink droplet printing technology.
This is because images printed on LaserJet printers are essentially “rolled and melted” onto the page and not sprayed in an accurate and directed manner that is required in a photo print.
This means that slight misalignments - also known as registration errors - can occur between printing each colour, which results in fringing, blurring, or light/dark streaking along the edges of coloured regions.
Inkjet printers, on the other hand, utilise print heads that spray droplets onto the photo paper, which is both highly accurate and gives users the ability to print the widest possible range of colours.
The rule of thumb is photos are best printed on inkjets, and high volume documents are best printed on LaserJet printers.
(2) Number of inks and droplet size
Traditionally, colour printers have used a combination of four inks, namely yellow, cyan (light blue), magenta (pinkish red) and black to achieve the colour mix.
In fact, many printers today still utilise these four ink colours to produce amazing-looking photographs.
However, mid-to-high-end printers are increasingly being launched with between six and eight inks, which are designed to give users an even wider range of printable colours.
This results in pictures looking richer and crisper and the colours closely matching the original colours of the subject or landscape that was photographed.
The size of the droplets being fired onto the photo paper also makes quite a difference to the end result. Simply put - the smaller the droplets, the more detail you can fit into a single print -the better it will look closer up.
Ink droplets are usually measured in microscopic picolitres - so the smaller the numbers of picolitres, the smaller the ink droplets are and the better the resolution becomes.
For beginners and even amateurs, traditional four-ink printers serve their purpose well at delivering high quality photographs. But if you're a professional and you intend on making a living out of your photos, it may be worth your while to invest in a six- or eight-colour-ink printer.
(3) Resolution and speed to print
If you're concerned with the quality of your photo print, then speed shouldn't be a criteria you worry too much about because, while printers have improved over the years with regards to speed, great photos will inevitably take time to print.
That said, a good quality printer will still rely heavily on your computer's ability to process a photo, based on how much memory it has and its processing power. In the case of standalone photo printers, the speed will be determined by the printer's internal hardware.
It's hard to compare one brand to another with regards to photo printing speed though, because there is no real defined industry standard for measuring printing speed, and many of the printing speeds that you see displayed in marketing collateral and on product boxes is estimated under 'ideal' conditions.
Companies like Epson have put research into developing wide print heads that cover a great surface area of the photo paper and, by default, improve the printing speed. Usually, the larger the printer, the faster it'll print (due to a bigger print head).
Printer resolution, on the other hand, is something that you can compare brands with, because while many printers may operate similarly, and even cost the same, not all are created equal.
Resolution refers to the manner in which ink droplets (pixels) are fired onto the printed page. So a higher resolution means a more detailed picture.
1440 x 720dpi (that is 1 440 pixels horizontally and 720 pixels vertically) suits most printing requirements - and is usually the standard for most inkjet printers these days.
Bear in mind that anything higher than 1440 x 720dpi will slow the printing process down - however, it will produce a much higher quality picture.
The trick is to find a happy medium between quality and printing speed. For consumers and amateurs, 1440 x 720 is very sufficient, while professionals may want higher resolutions, which only high-end printers are capable of printing.
(4) Size and paper path
While the physical size of the printer is important from a desktop or studio 'real-estate' perspective, the size of a printer will also determine the size of paper its capable of accepting.
Generally, most printers will accept a maximum of A4 and anything below, while mid-to-high-end printers will accept sizes from A4 up to A0 in the case of large format printers.
Paper also comes in varying thicknesses - especially when you consider that many fine art papers are almost as thick as cardboard, and there is also the ability to print on canvas, which can jam if it's too thick for the printer to handle.
Many mid- and high-end printers will have multiple paper paths, which will allow you to select the most appropriate path for paper to feed into your printer without causing jams.
The best is a straight-through paper path, which means that paper will pass directly through the printer and underneath the print heads without bending - reducing the risks of paper being fed in skew or jamming and causing wastage or - even worse - damage to the printer itself.
(5) Grouped or individual inks
While it may seem the logical choice to replace only the colour ink that has run out, many low-end printers still use grouped ink cartridges, which place the yellow, cyan and magenta colours together in a single cartridge.
While it's a cost-saver for printer manufacturers, the truth is that users will end up wasting money and ink if they have to replace a grouped cartridge if only one or two colours have run out.
Particularly with photo printing, it's never easy to tell which colours you are going to run out of first or use the most, which is also why it's important to select a printer that allows you to replace individual colours.
It's just more cost-effective and gives you the ability to better manage your ink usage.
While there are several factors to consider when choosing the best photo printer, taking the time to carefully consider your options will lead to a better long-term investment. Whether you're looking for print quality, ease-of-use, or fast print speeds, there is a printer out there that will fit your needs. Now that you know what features to look for, go get that new printer and take your at-home photography reproduction to the next level.
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