With the popularity of digital cameras, more and more people are taking more and more photographs. In fact despite scare-mongering stories about "the end of history" and "the death of photography", the truth is that there are more photos being taken today than ever before. However most of those photos will never be seen by anyone except the person who took them, because hardly anyone prints their photos any more. This is very odd, because many people have home computers with photo-quality printers that are more than capable of producing first-class prints from almost any digital photograph.
1 Photo laboratory
The first way is to use special labs.
Now digital cameras are common almost any retail shop offers image printing from your camera’s memory card or from CD. Online services provide another suitable way to turn a batch of image files into frame-ready photos – upload the images via the Internet and after some days you get the shots in the mail. This solution is ideal for people living in small towns, but even if you are living in a megapolis you may find it convenient.
For everyday pictures I use these services, and normally I am satisfied with the quality. But before I spent any money I checked the different photolabs around, and the first results were terrible. Different labs developed the prints in completely different styles and with every possible mistake: wrong brightness, shifted white balance, cropped images etc. but I finally found my service. There is no reason to name it because it is a local company in Austria, where I live. The point is if you are not satisfied with prints from your current lab either, you should look for somewhere else. And remember the highest price doesn’t necessarily mean better quality.
Don’t forget: photo prints look different to the same image on a monitor. It happens because a display glows, but photopaper doesn’t.
When you select the print size, be ready for new paper dimensions or to crop images. Digital images have different proportions from film. With film you get 2:3, for digital – 3:4. Paper sizes still exist from decades ago, and they are naturally oriented to film shots. Using “classic” formats with digital images gives unwanted effects.
But many labs offer special paper formats with the right proportions.
2. Printer
In some special cases I prefer to print my photos at home. Sometimes there is no time to wait; sometimes the photo needs special fine processing. For these cases I have an inkjet printer with special paper.
There are at least three main types of colour printers: inkjet, laser and dye-sublimation. All of them have their own advantages and problems. If you need to you can check out some specialist literature for an exact comparison, but I want only to say: for home use inkjets are the winners. They operate off a fairly simple principle. The printer has a head which moves rapidly over the surface of the paper. In this head are a number of tiny nozzles, through which minute droplets of ink are forced, spraying onto the paper in tiny but precisely measured quantities, as many as 30,000 droplets per second.
Almost all modern inkjet printers excluding entry-level models are able to make really good prints, and brand name doesn’t really matter. However the price of prints and quality can vary. It is not a secret that the cheap price of some devices is compensated with a high price for ink cartridges. For this reason, if you buy a new printer for use in your darkroom too, first read the reviews in current computer magazines.
Another printer type is apllicable for home use is the dye-sublimation type, often shortened to “dye-sub”. This technology is popular for smaller dedicated photo printers, such as Kodak’s EasyShare range of docking printers. Most print out at sizes no larger than 6 x 4 inches, although some A4-sized models do exist, such as the Olympus P-440.
Dye-sub printers work in a completely different way to inkjets. They use a ribbon carrying coloured panels of special dye, and this dye is transferred to specially treated paper by a thermal process. The ribbon will have to be replaced after a specific number of uses, so paper and ribbons are usually sold together as a pack, with just enough paper for the lifetime of the ribbon. Usually the ribbons carry cyan, yellow and magenta dye, and the image on the paper is built up one colour at a time. Dye sub printers are usually slower than equivalent-sized inkjet printers, and are usually also more expensive to buy and run. They are more wasteful of resources, since the ribbons cannot be reused despite there frequently being a lot of dye left after use. The main advantage with dye-sub printers is that they do produce almost perfect photo-quality prints, since the image is built up in transparent layers rather than a pattern of tiny dots. Dye-sub prints may also be more resistant to fading.
3. Through the jungle of printer specifications
Understanding all the descriptions in computer equipment is not an easy task even for hardened professionals. To help you find the right printer I’ll explain the most important points.
For inkjet printers, especially for photo printing, don’t accept less then four separate colours: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Some cheap models use no black cartridge at all or you can install black or colour cartridge (with three inks inside). The main disadvantage of this is poor shadow reproduction.
Some printers can use more than four basic colours, replacing the black cartridge with a special “photo” unit which contains black, light cyan and light magenta. This system can provide even better quality, but not for free: this special cartridge is expensive and has low capacity. It really is better to use printers with separate ink tanks. If one colour runs out, you can to replace this cartridge and continue to use the others.
Print speed. Check the printer description to find out the time required for printing a page. Manufacturers tend to show the speed for best-case scenarios, as a rule for plain text, but photo printing needs much more time. For example, my printer provides “up to 12 pages/min”, but a high-quality 6x4” photo takes about 3 minutes.
Advice: you should be ready for leisurely printing.
Printer resolution. This value refers to how many dots of ink the printer is able to place onto one linear inch of paper. It’s measured in “dots per inch” or dpi. Printer manufacturers make a big deal about the highest resolution, but in fact this parameter alone is not so important. For inkjet printers resolution measured for all four colours, and to compare this value with ones used in the polygraphic industry you should divide it by four. This means that 1440 dpi on your inkjet printer corresponds to 360 “polygraphical” dpi. But don’t worry this is not so bad, because hi-quality colour books are printed at 300 dpi.
Much more depends on the paper then on bare resolution. And image processing specially for printing affects even more than paper. Merely increasing linear resolution by two (for instance from the “usual” 1440 dpi to “Super-HQ” 2880 dpi) means 4 times more dots and 4 times more printing time.
Anyway, choosing a printer based on dpi only is not a smart decision.
Special features. Integrated card readers, preview screens and so called PictBridge interface. The common purpose of these is to exclude a computer from the printing process. In my opinion there is no reason to pay extra money for pretty but unusual things. In my case almost all photos should be processed on your computer before printing, otherwise the end results may be dispiriting. Only when quality doesn’t matter, but each minute is important are these features important.
Print Costs. Did you know why inkjets are so cheap in comparison with other printer types? Because of the high cost of consumables: ink cartridges and paper. Some models are sold even below cost, but later on the purchase of consumables during the printer’s lifetime you have spent more than enough to cover the cost to the manufacturer. For this reason when you read the manuals for all printers they strongly recommend using “original” materials only.
An exact cost calculation is impossible, because ink consumption depends on the image and on your settings. In any case the most significant cost is that of ink cartridges. .By printing hi-quality images ink consumption will be extremely high, and your experiments can cost a lot of money.
You can found some comparisons of print costs for different models in computer magazines or on the Internet.
Sometimes you can cut these costs.
Firstly– Use “compatible” cartridges. As a rule you can purchase these units from third party suppliers for about half the price of originals. The quality is usually almost the same. But not all models have alternative cartridges.
Secondly – Refilling. In any computer shop you can find a set of bottles with ink, syringes and needles. This is the cheapest but most risky way:
- not all cartridge models like refilling,
- you can lose your warranty, if your printer is damaged with a refilled cartridge
- refilling is a really dirty job.
This factor of owning costs is most important but hard to evaluate. There is no point in making any suggestions about best-buy-printers, because new models are released every month.
Commonly, printers with separate ink cartridges have lower print costs than models with composite ones.
In the last few years special photo printers have become very popular. There are even compact models for printing on small-size (up to 4x6”) photo paper only. These devices have a full range of features for stand-alones: preview screen, card reader, PictBridge, USB, FireWire, and sometimes even Bluetooth (for data capture from mobile phones).
Inside it’s a typical inkjet with three-color block cartridge. So, why isn’t this the optimal choice?
If you have no computer at all, maybe this is a good choice for urgent image publishing, but otherwise it’s better to fork out on a good full-size printer. At least it’s useful for common prints too.
4 Special paper for photos.
Normal office paper not good enough for photos, and is only really suitable for drafts. In shops you can find a number of photo paper types with different prices and from different manufacturers. Some authors recommend using paper only from your printer manufacturer. My experience says that it is not so important: for me prints on paper for Hewlett-Packard are better than the “original” for Epson.
It is more important to select the right type of paper for your purposes. You can choice from:
- matt paper
- usual glossy paper
- extra glossy paper
- water resistant paper
- paper with structured surface (like canvas, for instance)
- fast-drying paper
- paper with high color stability for long-term storage
There are also hundreds of special papers and films for transferring images on cups, T-shirts etc.
Don’t worry; this situation is not as terrible as it looks. For almost all purposes, especially in the beginning, normal glossy paper is good enough. Matt paper reduces bright colors and prints don’t look as attractive. But for some cases matt paper is preferable.
Try to test papers from different suppliers: they can have different color saturation or other nuances. For example I hate the extra-glow colors you get on Japanese wall calendars, but you have a right to your opinion. It is purely a question of personal taste.
