Is it worth getting a photo printer?

[nerwin]

Frame It!

I don't have any frames on my photos, I just stick them on the wall. Haha.

 

[crzyfotopeeple]

I print at home with a Canon pro 100. I love it and wouldn't have it any other way. Ink is a little pricey but the prints come out beautiful. The paper is really affordable if you order from Amazon. When I bought my printer they were doing huge rebates so I ended up only spending 100 bucks on a brand new printer. I'm signing up for a street market so I have been making a large number of prints and haven't had any problems. You can also order pre-cut mats online with everything you need to mount your prints if you so desire.

 

[Ysarex]

You can buy very good printers relatively cheap. I have a Canon pixma is4800 and a Canon pixma ip6500. One ix a4 the other is a3+, one is practically identical to the other apart from size.

Both these printers are capable of great colour printing. Both are fairly low maintenance, I just print a 5x7 if there idle a while to keep things ticking over.

If you want to print black and white though, you have to spend the dough

Why would monochrome be harder to print?

Because regular consumer type printers can't get the blacks right. Everything normally turns out too green, yellow, or in simple terms, the black is not black or rich enough. I have tried everything I know of and they just are never quite right. Finally, I surmised it's mainly the ink as I cracked one black cartridge open and using a palette knife, evenly smeared some on a piece of glass and it had a strong yellow tint as opposed to a blue (Canon). A trick I learned in custom painting when a customer wanted a jet black paint job. I always added blue to get it jet black.

There's a trick to that. A single black ink in a color printer will make a awful B&W print. The trick is to mix in the color inks. Make sure the photo is actually RGB and give it a subtle tint -- like warm in up a smidge. This will avoid the single black ink problem. The next problem will be accurately hitting that subtle color tint. If you want to see just how good your printer ICC profiles are try printing a monochrome image. So the next step to this trick is a custom ICC profile for the paper and printer -- got to have a good spectrophotometer.

Joe

 

[nerwin]

Wasn't the Canon PIXMA PRO‑100 a long time given away with a DSLR? I think I remember something like this and people were turning around ands selling them on eBay for next to nothing.

 

[nerwin]

You can buy very good printers relatively cheap. I have a Canon pixma is4800 and a Canon pixma ip6500. One ix a4 the other is a3+, one is practically identical to the other apart from size.

Both these printers are capable of great colour printing. Both are fairly low maintenance, I just print a 5x7 if there idle a while to keep things ticking over.

If you want to print black and white though, you have to spend the dough

Why would monochrome be harder to print?

Because regular consumer type printers can't get the blacks right. Everything normally turns out too green, yellow, or in simple terms, the black is not black or rich enough. I have tried everything I know of and they just are never quite right. Finally, I surmised it's mainly the ink as I cracked one black cartridge open and using a palette knife, evenly smeared some on a piece of glass and it had a strong yellow tint as opposed to a blue (Canon). A trick I learned in custom painting when a customer wanted a jet black paint job. I always added blue to get it jet black.

There's a trick to that. A single black ink in a color printer will make a awful B&W print. The trick is to mix in the color inks. Make sure the photo is actually RGB and give it a subtle tint -- like warm in up a smidge. This will avoid the single black ink problem. The next problem will be accurately hitting that subtle color tint. If you want to see just how good your printer ICC profiles are try printing a monochrome image. So the next step to this trick is a custom ICC profile for the paper and printer -- got to have a good spectrophotometer.

Joe

There is a lot more science to this than I thought. If I had the money and well, space, it would probably be a worthy investment, especially, if I sold prints a lot.

I think I sold more canvas prints than paper actually. Hmmm

 

[jcdeboever]

You can buy very good printers relatively cheap. I have a Canon pixma is4800 and a Canon pixma ip6500. One ix a4 the other is a3+, one is practically identical to the other apart from size.

Both these printers are capable of great colour printing. Both are fairly low maintenance, I just print a 5x7 if there idle a while to keep things ticking over.

If you want to print black and white though, you have to spend the dough

Why would monochrome be harder to print?

Because regular consumer type printers can't get the blacks right. Everything normally turns out too green, yellow, or in simple terms, the black is not black or rich enough. I have tried everything I know of and they just are never quite right. Finally, I surmised it's mainly the ink as I cracked one black cartridge open and using a palette knife, evenly smeared some on a piece of glass and it had a strong yellow tint as opposed to a blue (Canon). A trick I learned in custom painting when a customer wanted a jet black paint job. I always added blue to get it jet black.

There's a trick to that. A single black ink in a color printer will make a awful B&W print. The trick is to mix in the color inks. Make sure the photo is actually RGB and give it a subtle tint -- like warm in up a smidge. This will avoid the single black ink problem. The next problem will be accurately hitting that subtle color tint. If you want to see just how good your printer ICC profiles are try printing a monochrome image. So the next step to this trick is a custom ICC profile for the paper and printer -- got to have a good spectrophotometer.

Joe

I have tried that too but my printer is consumer level. Never been happy with B&w prints from home. I spent a fair amount of time trying to overcome it, then I seen the tint of the black ink and it made sense.

 

[nerwin]

You can buy very good printers relatively cheap. I have a Canon pixma is4800 and a Canon pixma ip6500. One ix a4 the other is a3+, one is practically identical to the other apart from size.

Both these printers are capable of great colour printing. Both are fairly low maintenance, I just print a 5x7 if there idle a while to keep things ticking over.

If you want to print black and white though, you have to spend the dough

Why would monochrome be harder to print?

Because regular consumer type printers can't get the blacks right. Everything normally turns out too green, yellow, or in simple terms, the black is not black or rich enough. I have tried everything I know of and they just are never quite right. Finally, I surmised it's mainly the ink as I cracked one black cartridge open and using a palette knife, evenly smeared some on a piece of glass and it had a strong yellow tint as opposed to a blue (Canon). A trick I learned in custom painting when a customer wanted a jet black paint job. I always added blue to get it jet black.

There's a trick to that. A single black ink in a color printer will make a awful B&W print. The trick is to mix in the color inks. Make sure the photo is actually RGB and give it a subtle tint -- like warm in up a smidge. This will avoid the single black ink problem. The next problem will be accurately hitting that subtle color tint. If you want to see just how good your printer ICC profiles are try printing a monochrome image. So the next step to this trick is a custom ICC profile for the paper and printer -- got to have a good spectrophotometer.

Joe

I have tried that too but my printer is consumer level. Never been happy with B&w prints from home. I spent a fair amount of time trying to overcome it, then I seen the tint of the black ink and it made sense.

I have a few black and white metallic prints I got from a shop and they are just beautiful, especially when the light hits it just right, they just pop!

 

[jcdeboever]

You can buy very good printers relatively cheap. I have a Canon pixma is4800 and a Canon pixma ip6500. One ix a4 the other is a3+, one is practically identical to the other apart from size.

Both these printers are capable of great colour printing. Both are fairly low maintenance, I just print a 5x7 if there idle a while to keep things ticking over.

If you want to print black and white though, you have to spend the dough

Why would monochrome be harder to print?

Because regular consumer type printers can't get the blacks right. Everything normally turns out too green, yellow, or in simple terms, the black is not black or rich enough. I have tried everything I know of and they just are never quite right. Finally, I surmised it's mainly the ink as I cracked one black cartridge open and using a palette knife, evenly smeared some on a piece of glass and it had a strong yellow tint as opposed to a blue (Canon). A trick I learned in custom painting when a customer wanted a jet black paint job. I always added blue to get it jet black.

There's a trick to that. A single black ink in a color printer will make a awful B&W print. The trick is to mix in the color inks. Make sure the photo is actually RGB and give it a subtle tint -- like warm in up a smidge. This will avoid the single black ink problem. The next problem will be accurately hitting that subtle color tint. If you want to see just how good your printer ICC profiles are try printing a monochrome image. So the next step to this trick is a custom ICC profile for the paper and printer -- got to have a good spectrophotometer.

Joe

I have tried that too but my printer is consumer level. Never been happy with B&w prints from home. I spent a fair amount of time trying to overcome it, then I seen the tint of the black ink and it made sense.

I have a few black and white metallic prints I got from a shop and they are just beautiful, especially when the light hits it just right, they just pop!

Yup, black n white looks great on top of silver metallic.

 

[nerwin]

You can buy very good printers relatively cheap. I have a Canon pixma is4800 and a Canon pixma ip6500. One ix a4 the other is a3+, one is practically identical to the other apart from size.

Both these printers are capable of great colour printing. Both are fairly low maintenance, I just print a 5x7 if there idle a while to keep things ticking over.

If you want to print black and white though, you have to spend the dough

Why would monochrome be harder to print?

Because regular consumer type printers can't get the blacks right. Everything normally turns out too green, yellow, or in simple terms, the black is not black or rich enough. I have tried everything I know of and they just are never quite right. Finally, I surmised it's mainly the ink as I cracked one black cartridge open and using a palette knife, evenly smeared some on a piece of glass and it had a strong yellow tint as opposed to a blue (Canon). A trick I learned in custom painting when a customer wanted a jet black paint job. I always added blue to get it jet black.

There's a trick to that. A single black ink in a color printer will make a awful B&W print. The trick is to mix in the color inks. Make sure the photo is actually RGB and give it a subtle tint -- like warm in up a smidge. This will avoid the single black ink problem. The next problem will be accurately hitting that subtle color tint. If you want to see just how good your printer ICC profiles are try printing a monochrome image. So the next step to this trick is a custom ICC profile for the paper and printer -- got to have a good spectrophotometer.

Joe

I have tried that too but my printer is consumer level. Never been happy with B&w prints from home. I spent a fair amount of time trying to overcome it, then I seen the tint of the black ink and it made sense.

I have a few black and white metallic prints I got from a shop and they are just beautiful, especially when the light hits it just right, they just pop!

Yup, black n white looks great on top of silver metallic.

However, I can't say every black and white looks good on metallic. I have a b&w shot I took in Boston near the old state house and I did not like it in metallic at all, it was too much and overpowering. But I got it in lustre, it looked so much better.

 

[table1349]

Excellent printer for both color and B&W if it is not out of your price range. Epson SureColor® P600 Wide Format Inkjet Printer - Product Information - Epson America, Inc.

 

[nerwin]

Excellent printer for both color and B&W if it is not out of your price range. Epson SureColor® P600 Wide Format Inkjet Printer - Product Information - Epson America, Inc.

Looks pretty good, but I think I'm going to have to put this whole wide format printer thought to the side for now. I don't think it would be worth it right now. But some day I want to have one.

 

[jeffW]

My inkjet photo printer kicked the bucket about a year ago and honestly have not missed it. Yes I love prints over digital - but every-time I went to print a cartridge needed to be replace, i had to clean the jets, I didn't have as right paper in stock etc, etc..

Plus friends or family can't ask for free PS work / printing when they know I now use the local lab. Costco always seems to have discounts going on, plus it's nice visiting with the local lab folk

 

[spiralout462]

My Photo printer pays for itself over, and over. I LOVE the control it provides also.

They practically "give" away the Canon Pro-100. You can use it until the inks are gone, throw it away and still justify the purchase.

If you decide to keep it, Precision Color inks are a Godsend!

 

[KmH]

There is a ton to learn about if you want to make your own prints and good, colorfast, long lasting inkjet inks/dyes are not inexpensive (about $50,000 per gallon):
The Digital Negative: Raw Image Processing in Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Photoshop (2nd Edition)
The Digital Print: Preparing Images in Lightroom and Photoshop for Printing
Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom (2nd Edition)
Fine Art Printing for Photographers: Exhibition Quality Prints with Inkjet Printers

 

[chuasam]

I've found that I can print at Costco for less than my cost for printing at home.