| The Digital Darkroom: Color Inkjet Printers by Crimson Star |
Do Your Homework! Research is the key to selecting a suitable printer. First, review Digital Darkroom Basics, Part 1: The Printer. That column was also about printers, but things have improved since then. Do not bother reading sales literature. It's out-of-date by the time you get it. Instead, dial into each printer company's Web site and review the marketing and technical material you find there. What should you look for? If you want to print high quality photos, go for the highest resolution printer that also meets your other requirements. Most good printers now support 720 dpi x 720 dpi. Some can print 1440 dpi x 720 dpi, or more. None of these printers are expensive compared to the average price from two years ago. Make darn sure your printer has an On/Off switch. Believe it or not, the cheap ones don't. If your print job hangs, you have to "pull the plug" on the printer to reset it. Bad idea. Most printers connect to a standard parallel port on your computer. This may be called a "bi-directional" parallel port. Some use a newer port call an "enhanced parallel port" (EPP). These require a special cable but are faster. Note that EPP does not always work! Some printers may support a "universal seial bus" (USB) connection. In real life, computers do not work well with USB devices due to problems with the drivers. NEVER plug your printer into the back of a scanner, external cd-rom, ZIP drive or whatnot. Yes, it should work but in reality it usually doesn't. Install a 2nd parallel port if you need it. So much for the easy choices! Color still causes as many problems today as it always did. Some printers use a single ink cartridge that has three color chambers in it. The three colors must be mixed to produce black. This type of printer is not suitable for high quality photo work. Good printers always have a separate cartridge for black ink, in addition to the multi-color cartridge. My "old" Epson Stylus PRO uses this system and gives great results. You shouldn't settle for less, and you might want even more. The best printers have a separate cartridge for each color, and for black. If you do a lot of printing, you will save money by replacing only the colors that are empty. The Epson 700 Photo throws in an extra color to produce higher quality photos. The Alps MD1300 offers various color sets, for normal color, metallic colors or photo color. You need the best color you can find, but there are problems to consider. The Alps MD1300 is certainly the best, but it is painfully slow in color-photo mode. The Epson 700 Photo is second-best and prints color photos at average speed. Beware of Bad Drivers! The real problem is with the printer drivers. Your computer needs a software driver to enable it to communicate with the printer. Current operating systems, such as MS Windows 95, MS Windows 98 and MS NT 4.0, include drivers for most printers. Your printer will also include a driver disk with drivers for most operating systems. Special drivers are often available from other vendors for commercial applications (usually with PostScript). Not all drivers are created equal. My Epson Stylus Pro runs from an NT 4.0 system. There are three drivers installed. The Microsoft driver that came with NT 4.0 is the fastest and most stable, but the color is poor for photos. The Epson driver that came with the printer produces the best color, but only on the "old" Epson photo papers that are not readily available anymore. The Epson driver currently available from their Web site for NT 4.0 handles their new papers, but the color is not as good as it used to be and the driver itself is very unstable. What's the point? You need a good printer driver for your operating system. If you have Windows 98, then look for a technical review or test of the printer you want that was run on Windows 98. Results from Windows 95, NT 4.0 or the Mac will not be the same. Trust me, it makes a BIG difference! Last but not least, you need good paper for good photos. I won't beat around the bush here, either. You need the highest quality paper that your printer manufacturer makes. You must not use any other brand of paper, or you will be wasting your time (as well as your ink and paper). Each printer company designs their printers with a special ink formulation. The ink is matched to their paper. They know how much ink will be absorbed, what the spread will be, etc. Their printer drivers take this into consideration to produce the best photo print possible. If you use some other brand of paper, the results will not be as good. There are a variety of paper sizes available from most vendors. If you plan to use a special size, make sure they have photo-quality paper in that size. Often, the large size paper is medium quality. For what it's worth, I am replacing my Epson Stylus Pro with the Epson 700 Photo. I would have selected the Alps MD1300 for its better quality, but I can't wait 45 minutes for a print (I can make a Cibachrome faster than that!) Next month I will let you know if I made the right choice, then help you decide how to select a scanner from the many fine models available.
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