Printing Photos At Home

dragondog

Hi

I was wondering if folks can recommend an economical way of printing photos at home?
I use a HP Photosmart 5520 (I am due an upgrade) - when I print about 12 photos - the ink is near gone
Is there a better printer folks can recommend?

Thanks
Dragondog

CelticRambler

Having just helped a friend get some photos printed using an online service, I don't think I'd ever bother with home printing again. I've had so many problems - running out of ink, running out of paper, not running out of paper but it's too old and doesn't work, not running out of ink but it's been so long since I last used the printer that the head is gunged up, and even when everything's working, having to wait three or four days anyway for delivery of fresh ink or paper.

In contrast, I called around to my (70-year old) friend's house on Thursday to help archive her 2000 photos :eek: out of which she wanted 45 printed. 5 minutes to create an account with an on-line printer, 5-minute wait for the welcome message and 10€ off first order, 5 minutes to upload the 45 pics. The voucher covered the cost of the printing (and then some) leaving 3€95 to pay for postage. The photos were delivered on Saturday.

I won't bother giving a link to the print website, as I presume you're in Ireland and we're not, but you've surely got a similar service there. If you're "due for an upgrade" do the sums before you spend ...

pixbyjohn

I would second all he/she said above

harr

And I will third all of above....to print at home you will need a good high end printer and to be printing at high enough volumes.
All mine are done on line now and I am happy with that service, some online companies are better than others but it all depends on what you are printing.
What I would recommend is getting a few photos printed from a few different online companies to see which you prefer.

LeoB

So what on-line printers would you recommend? I wouldnt print that many but for the ones I want to get printed it is not economical to do it at home.

Heebie

There is only one GOOD reason to print stuff at home... and it isn't available to most people.

IF you know enough about digital printing, and have the right kind of printer, and colour-control gear, you can do a much better job than a photolab will do. Those are some mighty big ifs.

The most economical printing processes for photos are still "wet" processes that use photo-sentitive paper that is processed in silver-laden chemistry.

No inkjet, dye-sublimation, Pictrography, thermal-transfer, or multi-colour separation can come anywhere near the combination of speed, uniquess/flexibility, quality, longevity, and cost-effectiveness of old-fashioned icky-chemical printing.

By "uniqueness/flexibility" I mean having individual, unique images printed. N-colour separations (generally 4, CYMK, but often more colours for more accurate printing.) done on a high-speed printing press can blow away chemical photo processes for speed and cost-effectiveness, at the expense of the other attributes. You can't print 20 different images easily, but you can print tens of thousands of copies of the same image.

Home printing, the equipment you're using will do a lot of "guessing" at what the right colours are. If it fits in the standard sRGB profile, then it'll probably be "close enough" that an untrained eye won't notice where it looks wonky. Any professional photographer should be able to spot the difference pretty easily.
Also, if you don't have your monitor properly calibrated, the colour you have on-screen might not have any resemblance whatsoever to what comes out of the printer, depending on the quality of the monitor and how it's adjusted. Having your monitor adjusted "the way you like it" is probably going to make prints look truly horrid.
Ink is also ridiculously expensive. Printing a single 4x6" print on an inkjet probably costs between € 0.50 and €1.00. Getting prints that size done at a photolab or via an online service that uses photochemical processes should only cost a couple of pennies.. maybe as much as 10 cent, for a 4x6" print.
The prints you get that are from a photochemical process should last about 75 years if they're from a modern lab, and that lab keeps their chemistry properly balanced. The more their chemistry is off, the shorter the lifespan of the print. Prints that are developed through contaminated fixer will become cloudy over time.

Another reason to print at home is *IF* you have a colour-calibrated monitor AND you have colour-control equipment to let you generate colour profiles specific to your printer and paper combinations.. and most importantly you have one of the few printers that uses ARCHIVAL inks, you can have a print lifespan of 100-200 years+ before appreciable fading occurs. You have to use the right printer, the right inks, and the right papers, and this process is far from cheap. Archival inks cost several times as much as the "normal" inks. Archival inks are "pigment-based" inks. Most inks are "dye-based" inks, and will fade in 3-8 years, and will be back to being a blank piece of paper in 10-15 years, so you'll need to print a new copy.

If you want the best combination of quality control and price, you're probably best off finding a good photolab, discussing how well they keep up their chemistry, colour-calibrating your monitor, and working up colour-profiles for each type of paper they use. (Technically you should do them for their 6" papers, 8" papers 10" papers etc.., and for each finish you use, so in a Fuji lab, probably glossy, lustre, and possibly also "matte" which isn't really matte, but is less lustrous than lustre... which is in-turn a lot less lustrous than glossy... and each of those finishes in each size they use in their equipment, and updated every time they switch to a new lot of paper, in case their paper suppliers have quality-control issues.)
You can do this with online suppliers too, but they are likely to be routing your printing work to different locations, especially if they're shipping it to you. I prefer being able to walk in & talk to the people doing the print work.

That's a lot to remember to do, but it'll give you seriously excellent quality at a good value price.

If you're a serious control freak, then get archival inkjet. Epson and Canon both have archival options. (last I knew HP did not, but hopefully that's changed since then.)

If you have any questions on any of the above, feel free to ask.

--Todd

dinneenp

Isn't another reason for home printing that you can print immediately? You're at an event (communion, party etc.), can print off a few photos for visitors to take home when leaving.

Heebie

dinneenp wrote:

Isn't another reason for home printing that you can print immediately? You're at an event (communion, party etc.), can print off a few photos for visitors to take home when leaving.

That actually makes it really important to be using something archival.
I think Canon makes an archival that is portable and runs on batteries.
If you give, or sell, a print to someone and in 3 years it needs replacing, they're not going to be happy, even if they got it free.

Heebie

dinneenp wrote:

Isn't another reason for home printing that you can print immediately? You're at an event (communion, party etc.), can print off a few photos for visitors to take home when leaving.

That actually makes it really important to be using something archival.
I think Canon makes an archival that is portable and runs on batteries.
If you give, or sell, a print to someone and in 3 years it needs replacing, they're not going to be happy, even if they got it free.