by Alexander Darracott

Created on: July 21, 2011

Photo printers are specialist printers that should be used by professional photographers or serious home users who have the requirement to print high quality photos.  Photo printers are likely to increase in popularity as the possibility for more devices such as iPhones, iPads and other portable devices are able to connect to printers.  These tips have been written as bite sized details of what features to look for in a photo printer, in order to help customers understand the features that they might require regarding a photo printer.     

Requirements

Establish a set of printing requirements, which shall help to determine if a photo printer is actually required.  There should be no such requirement if photo printing requirements are light .  A budget photo printer will be just as suitable for light photo printing requirements.

If a printer meets all requirements but it out of the range of budget, reanalyse the requirements to remove any requirements that are not essential.  This shall bring down the quantity of required features of a printer, leading to a higher chance of finding a printer that meets core requirements and is within budget.

Colour usage

There are printers available for those who print varying quantities of black and white photos.  These printers consist of more than one black ink cartridges and a quantity of grey cartridges.  The use of multiple grey ink cartridges can improve the quality of black and white photos. 

Printers can use composite black from a variety of other inks, but this might lead to a photo tinted with a certain colour.

Whilst additional colours can help with printing colour gradients such as the tone of the sky and clouds, they do not actually have an effect on the actual quality for example the sharpness and clarity of an image. 

The best way to determine if a printer’s quality is adequate and suitable for purpose is to view the output product of the printer and not be guided by its specification.

Portable photo printing

Choose one that supports PictBridge to connect directly to a digital camera.  Also, choose a printer that supports printing from various camera media cards and support of Bluetooth for connectivity to Bluetooth enabled devices. 

Make sure the printer comes with an LCD screen so that the photos can be viewed and manipulated, as far as the printer allows, before printing.  Casual photographers might appreciate this option,

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