Home Forums Gear Photography What printer do you use for your Photos.

I am having problems printing pictures on my current printer (leaves horizontal lines spaced evenly in the picture) and I will probably replace it. Would a dedicated photo printer be better or is there a good all in one unit to consider. I don't want to break the bank on the printer or ink. I'd rather spend money on new lenses or travel for new photo ops. Thanks in advance.

I do all my printing at Costco. If you don't have a Costco, there are any number of online photo labs that do excellent prints. Adorama, for instance.

Unless you are doing fine art prints and need specialized papers and inks, you'll likely be better off saving money by not buying a printer to use at home.

If you must have a printer at home, the Canon Pixma Pro 100 is an inexpensive, but quite good, desktop inkjet printer.

I retired from HP's printer division where I worked as an R&D engineer. Your question is difficult to answer. Frankly, the best answer is "it depends on what you want from the print and how often you'll print"

Ink printers can deliver a larger color gamut where as laser printers deliver an acceptable one but with less ink flow issues.

I believe, and my testing would support, the best option for a hobbist is a laser printer with glossy paper while utilizing a print service, as suggested above, for displayed images.

My testing showed, and there was a great deal, that HP printers across the entire line, consistently placed at or near the top. But Epson consistently placed at the top for photo images. This has to to with the color tables embedded in the printer. The Epson produced vibrant, punchy, images but falls short in producing true colors. I'm speaking of the consumer market and not proof printers.

I can go on forever, do you have specific printer questions?

Epson Artisan 837 inkjet/scanner. Colors are good if not true, got the monitor, and everything that can be, set to sRGB color space and I set the printer Gamma to 1.8 when printing images.

I use two printer's. I have a 13" Canon Pixma 90000 MKII and a Canon iP100. Ip100 is small and I can use it anywhere for print's to 8 1/2x11. I would get a photo deticated printer with seperate color tanks. Hard for me to understand why a guy would pay $1000+ for a lens and claim $.01 pre sq inch of ink is expensive? That is what it cost for my Pixma 9000 MKII.

Thanks again for the info,I will give outside processing a try.
TOM

Boise I have been using an HP Photosmart 6520 and was pleased with most of the finished products, but lately any picture I print has horizontal lines in them. I have cleaned the print head, tried new ink cartridges, new paper, checked the alignment and anything else I could think of and still no joy.
Documents and other things print fine. Do you have any ideas.
TOM

Tom--you need a real photo printer; they're not expensive to buy, but expensive to supply ink. I've had great service from Canon printers--terrible service from HP. The Pixma Pro 100 comes bundled with certain Canon photo equipment. And so can sometimes be found, new, very cheap (~$200) on c/l, as I did.

If you need a lot of prints, hire it out. But if you only need to print occasionally, especially after doing some minor Photoshop work, it's convenient to have a good printer.

Tom, I am not able to venture a guess about your banding without more information. What direction are the lines in relation to the print head motion? Are the lines white or a variation in darkness?

Tom, better yet, go here:

HP Troubleshoot

If you still wish help PM me.

Rick