Printer

An inkjet printer shoots out tiny droplets of liquid ink onto paper to create text, a graphic, or an image. While standard inkjet printers often use four colors to print, inkjet photo printers typically use six, seven, or eight different colors. The more colors, the better the quality of the photo.

Inkjet printers are great for printing photos, but color ink tanks can be expensive so they’re not economical for high volume work. If you want a less expensive and faster alternative for printing text, you might want to consider a laser printer.

A booming printer category, an all-in-one machine combines a printer (usually a color inkjet) with an image scanner (for turning documents into digital files), which also lets you make copies and (in some cases) send faxes. For photo printing, look for an all-in-one with more than three ink colors. Also, if family members like to print photos directly from their digital camera or memory card, a large LCD preview screen and memory card slots are important features.

A booming printer category, an all-in-one machine combines a printer (usually a color inkjet) with an image scanner (for turning documents into digital files), which also lets you make copies and (in some cases) send faxes. For photo printing, look for an all-in-one with more than three ink colors. Also, if family members like to print photos directly from their digital camera or memory card, a large LCD preview screen and memory card slots are important features.

While it’s true that light and environmental conditions can made prints fade, the longevity of prints made from inkjet printers has dramatically increased in the last few years thanks to advances in inkjet technology.

Canon now has the ChromaLife100 system, including Canon ChromaLife100 dye-based inks and select Canon photo papers. Properly made prints using this system should last a long time before the colors show any noticeable change: 100 years in dark storage (an archival-quality photo album); 30 years on display in a glass frame indoors, without direct sunlight or other high-intensity light; and 10 years of resistance to gases found in indoor air (ozone, nitrous oxides, sulfur oxides.)

At Epson they’ve chosen a pigment-based approach, the DURABrite Ultra Pigment Ink system, with fade resistance of up to 100 years – not only for prints made on special photo paper, but even for prints made on good-quality plain paper. Other manufacturers have also made advances in inkjet print longevity so do some research on the Internet to find out which one is best. One of the leading inkjet research sites to check is Wilhelm Imaging at www.wilhelm-research.com.

Thanks to some industry-wide standards, you don’t have to even turn on your computer to makes prints from you home printer. Most home printers are now “PictBridge” capable. PictBridge is an industry open standard that allows images to be printed directly from a digital camera to a printer, without having to go through a computer. It was created by the Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA).

The ImageLink print system is another standard, created by Kodak, designed to simplify at-home printing. With ImageLink, you can place any compatible digital camera directly on an ImageLink printer dock and then press a single button to make snapshot-size pictures in seconds.